Psychic Blindness or Visual Agnosia: Early Descriptions of a Nervous Disorder

Abstract

This article briefly reports on three early contributions to the understanding of visual agnosia as a syndrome sui generis. The authors of the respective papers worked in different fields such as physiology, ophthalmology, and neurology, and, although they were not in direct contact with each other, their results converged upon a consistent view of a nervous disorder that they called psychic blindness.

Keywords:

• visual agnosia
• nineteenth century
• Munk
• Wilbrand
• Lissauer

Notes

¹I here refer to Lissauer's patient (Lissauer, 1890, p. 243) who distinctively exhibited this symptom.

²Wigan's patient “lamented [to him] his utter inability to remember faces” (p. 128 [reprint) or p. 170 [original]).

³Munk was born in Posen (now Poznań), the capital of a Prussian province at the time. He studied medicine from 1855 to 1859 and was educated in physiology by du Bois-Reymond in Berlin. He qualified as a lecturer in physiology and anatomy at the medical faculty of the Berlin University in 1862 and obtained the title associate professor in 1869.

⁴Munk presented his data at a meeting of the Berlin Physiological Society on March 23, 1877. The proceedings of this meeting were published in the 1878 volume of the Archiv für Anatomie und Physiologie.

⁵These were mostly dogs and, to a lesser extent, monkeys.

⁶The term “visual image” may be considered a misconception because the brain does not form and store images but enables the animal to see and understand a visible scene. The conceptional confusion in all disciplines of neuroscience is splendidly treated in Bennet and Hacker (2003).

⁷A recent characterization of du Bois-Reymond as a scientist may be found in Otis (2007).

⁸Wilhelm Peters was professor of zoology and the director of the Berlin zoological garden at the time.

⁹Nathan Pringsheim was professor of botany and founded the first institute of plant physiology.

¹⁰Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften PAW (1812–1945) II-VI-67, Blatt 1–7; 29; II-V-120, Blatt 87–88; II-V-57, Blatt 13–15.

¹¹Some biographical details of Wilbrand may be found in Baumann (2009).

¹²Wilbrand was the main author of the handbook Die Neurologie des Auges, which appeared in nine volumes from 1898 to 1922.

¹³Lissauer's father, Abraham Lissauer (1832–1908), was a physician with special interests in anthropology and archeology.

¹⁴Carl Wernicke (1848–1905) was the director of the clinic at the time.

¹⁵ Kreuter (1996, p. 874).

¹⁶The original term of Dejerine (1892, p. 90) reads: “Cécité verbale avec intégrité de l'écriture spontanée et sous dictée.”