An Idiot's Remarkable Memory.

Auckland Star, Volume XXII, Issue 44, 21 February 1891, Page 2 (Supplement)

An Idiot's Remarkable Memory.

An idiot who, perhaps, surpasses all rivals in memory and in the capacity to make mental mathematical calculations, was recently examined in Sb. Pebersburg. He is 27 years old, and in his youbh was nobed for his brillianb abilities, bub was addicbed to the immoderate use of liquors, and led a dissipated life. He was attacked by an acute disease. When he recovered he was found to have lost all his mental faculties excepb memory and bhe power of mabhematical calculation. These increased proportionately as his understanding and power of logical thinking vanished. Now he is a living phonograph aud calculating apparatus. In the lecture-room, Professor Merjevsky requested him to square numbers containing five or six figures, to extract the square roots of like numbers and so on. All the questions were correctly answered by the patient in a few seconds. No mathematician present could do anything like it. Then the professor requested some one to read poetry aloud for several minutes, and the patient repeated ib as correctly as a phonograph. The memory and bhe calculating capacity of the patient are still , growing, while in other respects he is bo--1 coming a more hopeless idiot,