Víctor Leborgne, a clinical case that changed neurosciences

Many times scientific advances are achieved from the sufferings of some medical patients. That is the case of Víctor Leborgne, a French craftsman. Thanks to him, Broca’s area was discovered and the way in which the brain originates language was understood.

Víctor Leborgne’s brain is probably the most studied in the entire history of neuroscience. It is currently kept in the Dupuytren Museum of Pathological Anatomy in Paris and has been examined thousands of times. However, until just a few years ago very little was known about this man, to whom we owe important scientific discoveries.

Brain by Víctor Leborgne has been in the Museum for more than a century. Thanks to him, science managed to identify the area that controls language. There is no news that he has even authorized this donation to science. The truth is that we owe him a lot. His sufferings illuminated the way for medicine.

“Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition”.

-AdamSmith-

Cezary W. Domanski, psychologist and historian of science at the Marie Curie University of Sklodowska in Poland, decided to investigate the story of Victor Leborgne. Until he began to investigate, only the last name of this patient was known, but there was no notion of what his history was.

The beliefs of the time

The case of Victor Leborgne was presented in 1861 by Dr. Paul Broca . He did it before the Paris Anthropological Society. This was a major neurological finding. The doctor had managed to identify exactly the region of the brain on which language depended. Since then, this area has been known as Broca’s area.

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Broca was not the first to point out that language probably originated in the frontal lobe. However, At that time, the opinion majority was that mental functions originated in the hollow cavities of the brain. It was believed that the cerebral cortex was nothing more than a shell made of blood vessels and tissues, with hardly any major function.

The brain he used to test his theory belonged to a man Broca called simply Mr. Leborgne. It is not clear why he did this, as at the time there were no reservations regarding patient data. It was only known that he was a man who had lost his speech.

The recovered history of Víctor Leborgne

Domanski, the Polish historian, began his investigations in Paris. He managed to obtain the death certificate of a man named Víctor Leborgne, which coincided with the dates on which Dr. Broca made his famous presentation. From then on he was able to reconstruct the details of the story.

Victor Leborgne was born on July 21, 1820, in Moret-sur-Loing, a region of France.. His father had been a schoolteacher named Pierre Leborgne and his mother, a humble woman named Margueritte Savard. The couple had six children and Victor was the fourth of them.

From a very young age, Leborgne had begun to suffer epileptic seizures. Despite this, Víctor led a relatively normal life. She was educated as formier, a type of craftsman who made wooden molds for shoe manufacturers. In his region of origin there were many tanneries and shoemaking was a very common trade.

Paul Broca

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Speech loss and discovery

Everything indicates that Leborgne began to have more and more continuous and severe epileptic attacks. At the age of 30, he had a very strong attack, which left him speechless. Thus he arrived at the Bicetre hospital, two months after losing his speech. There he remained for the next 21 years of his life, until he died.

At first, Víctor Leborgne did not present any other problem, apart from his inability to speak. Apparently he understood everything that was said to him, but when he wanted to speak he only exclaimed the syllable “Tan.”. Today it is believed that this was reminiscent of the tannery workshops, which in French were called moulin à tan.

After about 10 years, Leborgne began to show signs of deterioration. His arm and her right leg became weak. Then she began to lose her vision and cognitive faculties. His depression had led him to remain bedridden for several years and he also suffered from gangrene. That’s when he was referred to Dr. Broca.

When Victor Leborgne died, Broca did the autopsy and found the anomaly in the frontal lobe. This allowed him to test his hypothesis and changed neuroscience forever. Humanity owes a lot to that man who suffered limitations for 21 years in a hospital and whose name he had even forgotten.