Differential Diagnosis of Aphasia With the Minnesota Test

In 1964 Dr. Schuell and associates published a sizeable volume "Aphasia in Adults" in which her approach to the study of aphasia was given and of which the monograph now under review represents the nuclear material. Her approach is essentially pragmatic, ie, she wishes to classify aphasics for purposes of treatment and prognosis, rather than to analyze aphasic syndromes in order to gain a deeper knowledge of brain function. This means that, while no one doubts the usefulness and humanitarianism of her techniques, many neurologists will be left unsatisfied by their lack of intellectualism. The therapist must deal with the hundreds of thousands of aphasics who suffer from "nonspecific" speech disorders; the physician is attracted to the rare "interesting" case with sharply defined linguistic deficits from which he hopes to illuminate problems of cerebral function.