Augusta Dejerine-Klumpke (1859–1927): Contributions to aphasiology by scientific mobility in the late 19th century

Abstract

Abstract The aim of this paper was to show the role of Augusta Dejerine-Klumpke in a concept of a cerebral localization of language, built on lesion studies of patients with aphasia or language deficits and comparative data in the outgoing 19th century. Augusta Dejerine-Klumpke, an American Medical Doctor living in Paris, tried to uncover the morphological basis of language and aphasia in her husband's laboratory, by using the most sophisticated methods available at her time including secondary (Wallerian) degeneration and serial sectioning. Her anatomical concept of the lesions involved in Broca's aphasia was very precise and might have been a reason for her conflict with more holistic researchers, such as Pierre Marie. Augusta Dejerine-Klumpke contributed actively and substantially to a concept of language and aphasia which was explicitly stated as shared contribution by her husband Joseph Jules Dejerine. Their so-called localizationistic concept in fact limited the importance of circumscribed cortical lesions to Broca's area, emphasized the role of subcortical structures in the genesis of aphasia, and remained accurate in certain ways with our current understanding of language as a complex functional system based on different interconnecting brain regions.