. A treatise on the nervous diseases of children, for physicians and students. tion. The pia and the cortex are apt to become aggluti-nated, and thus local cysticconditions with extreme lossof substance may readily oc-cur, the cyst occupying theplace which should be filledby normal brain substance. Through the kindness ofDr. Peterson the author isenabled to insert an illustra-tion (Fig. 130) of the brain ofa child that died at the ageof twenty months. The childhad been subject to convul-sions and had presented com-plete spastic paralysis of allfour extremities; the headmeasurements were extrem
. A treatise on the nervous diseases of children, for physicians and students. tion. The pia and the cortex are apt to become aggluti-nated, and thus local cysticconditions with extreme lossof substance may readily oc-cur, the cyst occupying theplace which should be filledby normal brain substance. Through the kindness ofDr. Peterson the author isenabled to insert an illustra-tion (Fig. 130) of the brain ofa child that died at the ageof twenty months. The childhad been subject to convul-sions and had presented com-plete spastic paralysis of allfour extremities; the headmeasurements were extreme-ly small (circ. ctm.). Overeach hemisphere a large por-tion of the convolutions waswanting. The vacuum wasfilled partly by subdural fluid,and partly by the bulging ofeach ventricle, for there was also internal hydrocephalus. Peterson thinks thecondition due to a double meningeal hemorrhage, but the defect correspondsso nearly to the distribution of the middle cerebral arteries that obliterationof these blood-vessels early in foetal life may have been the prime Fig. 130.—Large Double Porencephalic lived to age of twenty months. (From abrain kindly furnished by Dr. Peterson.) MICROCEPHALUS. In addition to the anomalies of brain structure in whichone or more parts may be defective, we have to considerthat condition in which the brain as a whole shows a de-fective development, failing to attain to the normal is, as a rule, a correspondingly small development ofthe skull, and to this small head the term microcephalus is given. While a microcephalus is bound to harbor an ab-normally small brain, we must not forget that a skull of DEFECTIVE DEVELOPMENT OF THE BRAIN. 507 normal size may also contain a small brain, the cranialcavity under such conditions being filled up by an excessof fluid. Microcephalus is evidently the result of a num-ber of different processes. It has been a habit to explain italtogether on Virchows theory, that the smallness
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