BOY’S BRAIN DISORDER

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, Issue 57, 18 February 1927, Page 7

BOY’S BRAIN DISORDER

CAUSES HIM TO WRITE. FROM RIGHT TO LEFT. London, Jan. 27. All day yesterday a perplexed little boy of 6j years, who is a patient at the Paddington Green Children’s Hospital, W.. found himself an object of interest to a number of visitors and photographers. Again and again he was asked to write his name and again and again he was posed for photographs. The boy was William Cozens, of Waverley road, Paddington, W., ’and he had drawn to himself all this attention becaqse, suffering from a rare complaint, he writes words backwards from the right to the left, using the left hancl, so that to be read th< writing ha- to be seen ir. r l-oking-glass.

The ra.- disorder from whic.. he suffers is known as mancinism a con. dition in which certain motor centres are transferred from the left to the right portion of the brain. The ca |se of mancinism is not very clear. It is known that the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, and in this instance apparently the motor-centre guiding the hand is on the right instead of on the left side of the brain.

Stammering usually accompanies mancinism. and it was this impediment which first caused little 'Vallie Cozens to be taken to the hospital.