Disturbances of Reading and Writing

Abstract

A review of early accounts of dysphasia (Benton and Joynt, 1960) credits Valerus Maximus in 30 A.D. with the earliest description of acquired dyslexia: a case of head injury producing an isolated acquired dyslexia. After an interval of almost two millenia, sporadic reports of acquired dyslexia became more common in the 1800’s but definitive steps toward understanding the acquired disorders of written language were not made until Dejerine (1891, 1892). His descriptions of the clinical findings and anatomical correlations of acquired dyslexia, with and without dysgraphia, remain essentially unaltered as the foundation of the study of disorders of written language.