The French surgeon Paul Broca had a patient in his care in 1861 who had fallen and broken his hip. Eighteen months earlier the man, called Lelong, had collapsed with a stroke that left him unable to speak. When Lelong died on Broca's ward, a hip fracture being a fatal condition in those days, an autopsy revealed damage to the left frontal lobe of his brain, a region now known as "Broca's area."
Broca was a child prodigy and graduated from medical school at 20. Soon he was appointed professor of surgical pathology at the University of Paris. He was initially interested in cartilage and bone, but turned to brain anatomy, and, after Lelong, saw many more patients with damage to the left part of their brains who had lost their ability to use language.
Eventually, Broca concluded "the two halves of the brain do not have the same attributes" and that the left hemisphere is concerned with language. The insight was startling at the time, but thanks to Broca and to the subsequent work of neurologists all over the world, it is now common knowledge. "Broca's aphasia" is a recognized disorder, aphasia meaning loss of language ability.