ABSTRACT
To our knowledge, the first case of deep dyslexia—a reading disorder of aphasic patients with the key features of semantic errors when attempting to read, derivational and visually (word-form) related errors, and pronounced deficits in reading function words and pseudo-/nonwords—was described in 1903 by the Swiss physician, later ophthalmologist, Gustav Wolff, in his patient Frau Fretz. In 1903, when Wolff published his study ‘Zur Pathologie des Lesens und Schreibens’, Wolff was ‘Privatdozent’ (a senior lecturer who fulfilled the academic qualifications for a professorship) at Basle University and assistant physician (registrar) at the Basle Hospital for the Insane.
