Book Review: The man who lost his language (Sheila Hale)

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Sheila Hale                                                
                                                           
THE MAN WHO LOST HIS LANGUAGE                              
                                                           
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Book review by Anthony Campbell. Copyright © Anthony       
Campbell (2003).                                           
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John Hale was an eminent art historian, the author of      
numerous books, who was active in public life in many      
capacities connected with art collections and museums. In  
1992, when he was 69, he suffered a stroke which left him  
unable to walk and deprived him of language. This          
exceptionally articulate man was abruptly reduced to being 
unable to say anything except "da whoas, da whoas". His    
wife Sheila then began a long struggle to restore him as   
far as possible to normality.                              
                                                           
Initially her experience of the National Health Service was
profoundly discouraging. The consultant in charge of her   
husband told her that nothing could be done and she should 
put him in a home. Rejecting this advice, she sought help  
wherever she could find it and under the care of a more    
sympathetic consultant John recovered the ability to walk. 
He could still not talk, however, so Sheila began to look  
for speech therapists who might be able to help. She soon  
found out that there is a huge range of ideas about speech 
disorders and how to treat them, and indeed much           
uncertainty exists about even the feasibility of treating  
them effectively. She therefore set about turning herself  
into an expert on the subject, reading everything she could
find about it and interviewing neurologists and language   
researchers to discover the latest ideas. Her experience as
a journalist was helpful to her in this undertaking.       
                                                           
The book therefore has a number of facets. It is, first and
foremost, a moving tribute to her husband - a love letter, 
in fact, as Sheila describes it. It is also an account of  
the long attempt to find a cure for his aphasia, and it is 
a detailed and sometimes quite technical description of our
present state of knowledge, or ignorance, about how the    
brain produces speech. Finally, it is also in part a bitter
criticism of the inadequacy of the provision for stroke    
victims in the National Health Service. (Penguin will      
donate 50p for each book sold to The Stroke Association,   
the country's leading charity for stroke sufferers.)       
                                                           
Some people have recovered from aphasia and have given us  
accounts of their experiences, and Sheila Hale quotes from 
these. Sadly, however, John never recovered his speech,    
although he did eventually acquire the ability to write    
short letters. But although he was confined to uttering "da
whoas", he had a remarkable degree of histrionic ability   
and was able to take part in conversations with his friends
with vivid evocations of mood. Indeed, in some ways, it    
seems, he could do this now even more effectively and      
dramatically than before his stroke. Curiously, however,   
although his intelligence remained very high he seemed     
unable to grasp fully the fact that people could not       
understand him. This is just one of the many paradoxes that
aphasia confronts us with.                                 
                                                           
Probably the dominant idea that one takes away from this   
book is of the extraordinary subtlety and complexity of    
language. Speaking is something that nearly everyone takes 
for granted, but there are so many ways in which it can go 
wrong, some of which are bizarre almost beyond belief. How 
can one explain, for example, a case cited by Sheila in    
which a speaker of normal English was transformed by a     
stroke into someone speaking with a strong French accent   
that even native French people found to be entirely        
authentic? (There have been other cases of this strange    
phenomenon: one woman, for example, acquired a strong      
Scottish accent.) And why do some people recover their     
speech after losing it while others do not? We still know  
very little about these things.                            
                                                           
John died seven years after his stroke, but those years    
were, it seems, very much worth having both for himself and
for his family and friends. Sheila certainly conveys this, 
but it is clear that his ability to continue to enrich the 
lives of those about him was due in no small measure to    
Sheila herself.                                            

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%T The man who lost his language
%A Sheila Hale
%I Penguin Books
%C London
%D 2003
%G ISBN 0-297-64301-0
%P x + 306 pp
%K biography
%O paperback
%O notes and bibliography
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