resting case of loss of language following acute disease of the brain :

"Harriet C., aged twelve, had typhus fever in December, 1845; she had much delirium and low symptoms, but, as is usual with children, soon got about again, and was able to return to school. However, after a few days' attendance, she was one evening, on returning thence, taken with a fit, of an undecided epileptic character, had rigors, and was again delirious. The delirium was monotonous, and remarkable for her constant repetition of the word 'sinner' with every variety of intonation. Wine and bark were, as during her former attack, resorted to, but symptoms of slight effusion in the brain caused its suspension. She recovered after a few weeks, so as to be up and dressed, but with the loss of power to pronounce any word except the one she had so often repeated during her fever. This she made serve to express all her ideas; for denial she shook her head, and saidsinner:' assent was expressed by the same word, and bread and butter was called 'sin-un-sinnĕr.' She perfectly understood all that was said to her, and appeared capable of reading her usual lessons. Blisters were applied behind her ears, and small doses of mercury administered, and at the same time her mother and family were instructed to teach her as they would an infant to talk. I also took opportunities of showing her, by exaggerated motions of my mouth and throat, the way of forming the letters, in the manner in which the born deaf and dumb are instructed, and found her intelligent and ready. She soon acquired the word 'yes,' and other elementary expressions, and by the end of the spring was able, as her mother told me, 'to talk like an old woman.' Symptoms of consumption had, however, appeared, and she died this last summer under the care of another medical man, whose kind efforts

to obtain a post-mortem examination for me unavailing."

"A farmer in the county of Wicklow, in comfortable circumstances, when fifty years of age, had a paralytic fit. Since that time he has never recovered the use of the affected side. The attack was succeeded by a painful hesitation of speech. His memory was good for all parts of speech except noun-substantives and proper names; the latter he could not at all retain. This defect was accompanied by the following singular peculiarity: he perfectly recollected the initial letter of every substantive or proper name for which he had occasion in conversation, though he could not recal to his memory the word itself. Experience had taught him the utility of having written in manuscript a list of the things he was in the habit of calling for or speaking about, including the proper names of his children, servants, and acquaintances: all these he arranged alphabetically in a little pocket dictionary, which he used as follows:-if he wished to ask anything about a cow, before he commenced the sentence he turned to the letter C, and looked out for the word 'cow,' and kept his finger and eye fixed on the word until he had finished the sentence. He could pronounce the word cow in its proper place, so long as he had his eyes fixed upon the written letters; but the moment he shut the book it passed out of his memory, and could not be recalled, although he recollected its initial, and could refer to it when necessary. In the same way when he came to Dublin, and wished to consult Dr. Graves, his physician, he came with his dictionary open to the halldoor, and asked to see Dr. Graves; but if by accident he had forgotten his dictionary, as happened on one occasion, he was totally unable to tell the servant what or whom he wanted. He could not recollect his own name unless he looked out for it, nor the name of any person

of his acquaintance; but he was never for a moment at a loss for the initial which was to guide him in his search for the word he sought.

His was a remarkably exaggerated degree of the common defect of memory, observed in the diseases of old age, and in which the names of persons and things are frequently forgotten, although their initials are recollected. It is strange that substantives or proper names, words which are the first acquired by the memory in childhood, are sooner forgotten than verbs, adjectives, and other parts of speech, which are a much later acquisition."

* Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science; a case recorded by Dr. Graves.

CHAPTER XVI.

Perversion and Exaltation of Memory. Memory of the Insane.

PERVERSION OF MEMORY.-Andral refers to a curious modification of the memory connected with a sudden or gradual loss of the remembrance of everything, save one object which "becomes to the person so afflicted the universe." "There is," says Andral, "a very singular perversion of the memory, which consists in the patient remembering everything except himself. He has, as it were, forgot his own existence, and when he speaks of himself, it is in the third person, the words I or ME are not in his vocabulary.'

M. Leuret has related the case of a woman who, in speaking of herself, always said, "La personne de moimême." An old soldier who was in the Asylum of Saint Yon, named Lambert, believed that he was killed at the battle of Austerlitz. When he spoke of himself, he was in the habit of saying, "This machine, which they thought to make like me, is very badly manufactured." When he spoke of himself, he did not use the personal pronoun I, but the demonstrative pronoun THAT, as if speaking of some inanimate object.

A man seventy years of age was suddenly seized with lock-jaw, and formication over the surface of the body. This was succeeded by vertigo, and a strange alteration in his language. He spoke with ease and fluency, but

* Andral's "Clinique Médicale."

often made use of odd words which nobody understood. He appeared to have coined new phrases in the place of others which he had forgotten. Occasionally he mixed numbers instead of words in his conversation, and in this respect the memory appeared to have been altered in its mode of action.

John Hunter was in the habit of relating in his lectures, a singular case of perversion of the memory succeeding an attack of acute disease of the brain. In this instance, the gentleman, who, besides referring the circumstances of his early life to the present period, had to such an extent lost all idea of the connexion between the past and the present, that although his mind could direct him as to what was to be done in consequence of certain impressions, and would direct him rightly as to the part of the body affected by them, he was in the habit, (having apparently lost all notion of his own identity,) of constantly referring his own sensations to those immediately about him. Thus, he would tell his nurse and the bystanders that he was certain that they were hungry or thirsty; but on offering him food or drink, it was evident by his eagerness, that the idea had arisen from a sense of hunger and thirst, and that the word they referred to himself and not to others.

He was subject to a violent cough, and after each paroxysm he would, in very appropriate and sympathetic terms, resume the subject on which he had been conversing, previously, however, expressing his feelings of distress from having witnessed the sufferings of his friend, adding, "I am sorry to see that you have so troublesome and harassing a cough."

A gentleman, who was in the habit of indulging in "potations, pottle deep," whenever he became intoxicated, invariably referred his own perverted sensations in a similar way to those immediately about him. Hence,

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