Augusta Dejerine-Klumpke (1859–1927): Contributions to aphasiology by scientific mobility in the late 19th century

• A. Dejerine-Klumpke favored a network approach including subcortical structures.
• She substantially shaped the Dejerines' model of language of aphasia.
• Her active contribution is inextricably tied to her husband's efforts.
• Her contribution is officially acknowledged by JJ. Dejerine as shared contribution.
• The localizationistic and holistic parties implicitly agreed on the importance of subcortical structures in aphasia in 1908.

The aim of this paper was to show the role of Augusta Dejerine-Klumpke in a concept of a cerebral localization of language, built on lesion studies of patients with aphasia or language deficits and comparative data in the outgoing 19th century. Augusta Dejerine-Klumpke, an American Medical Doctor living in Paris, tried to uncover the morphological basis of language and aphasia in her husband's laboratory, by using the most sophisticated methods available at her time including secondary (Wallerian) degeneration and serial sectioning. Her anatomical concept of the lesions involved in Broca's aphasia was very precise and might have been a reason for her conflict with more holistic researchers, such as Pierre Marie. Augusta Dejerine-Klumpke contributed actively and substantially to a concept of language and aphasia which was explicitly stated as shared contribution by her husband Joseph Jules Dejerine. Their so-called localizationistic concept in fact limited the importance of circumscribed cortical lesions to Broca's area, emphasized the role of subcortical structures in the genesis of aphasia, and remained accurate in certain ways with our current understanding of language as a complex functional system based on different interconnecting brain regions.