FORCED GRASPING AND GROPING
Abstract
MACDONALD CR1TCHLEY, M.D., M.R.C.P. Registrar, the National Hospital, Queen Square. has been written on the manifestations of disease in the frontal lobes, but the diagnosis of frontal tumour is rarely made with the nfidence that sometimes attends localization in other regions, because we possess few unequivocal signs of disease nfined to this part of the brain; the phenomena we are about to describe, however, were observed in three patients with a tumour of one frontal lobe, and a search for mparable cases observed by others revealed ten like our own, and a larger number in which the same signs acmpanied vascular lesions. In all of these cases the special signs were found in the upper limb of the side opposite to the diseased frontal lobe ; in some of the tumour cases they were, for a time, the only focal signs ; we are nvinced, therefore, that their presence in a patient with a cerebral tumour is unequivocal evidence of the situation of the tumour, and the main object of this mmunication is to draw attention to their value for the practical purpose of localization. MUCH DESCRIPTION OF CASES. Downloaded from brain.oxfordjournals.org at Infovell on November 21, 2010