To the left cerebral hemisphere failure to recognize familiar faces (prosopagnosia) is usually provoked by bilateral injury to more posterior regions of the brain an inability to remember the happenings of the day, or even the last We now have fancy, classical-sounding names for these conditions and some knowledge of the underlying pathologies that are their proximate cause: disorders in the expression and comprehension of language (the aphasias) are typically associated with damage Reports in his ''History of the Peloponnesian War'' how famine and typhus caused many people to be unable to recall recent events in their lives. His ''Natural History'' the elder Pliny tells how a man who fell from a high roof failed to recognize the faces of his mother and other close relatives and friends. Many other examples of severe but relatively isolated disorders of perception, knowledge or skilled action consequent upon injury to the brain were described by scholars of the ancient world. Now, as then, many people who are unfortunate enough to suffer a cerebrovascular accident - a stroke - become paralyzed on the right side of the body and lose Is describing a neurological condition well known to the modern physician.

''If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand lose its cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I remember thee not.'' The Psalmist's style differs somewhat from that of current medical journals, yet the writer WHEN the Psalmist lamented the Jewish exile by THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT And Other Clinical Tales. Marshall, a co-editor of ''Surface Dyslexia: Neuropsychological and Cognitive Studies of Phonological Reading,'' works in the neuropsychology unit of the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, England. Section 7, Column 1 Book Review Deskīy John C. March 2, 1986, Sunday, Late City Final Edition

The man who mistook his wife