ABSTRACT
The history of studying how language is organised in the brain goes back about 5,000 years. Howard and Hatfield (1987) cite observations made in an Egyptian papyrus of around 3,000 BC on how severe injury to the temple (such that fragments of bone could be seen in the interior of the ear) resulted in speechlessness. The surgeon, Imhotep, who describes these sad cases in the papyrus also commented on the importance of noting which side of the body had been injured, an observation which was not taken up with enthusiasm until the late nineteenth century AD, and the beginning of the systematic clinical study of language disorders after brain damage, aphasiology.
