LOSS OF MEMORY

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LIII, Issue 14, 19 February 1932, Page 4

LOSS OF MEMORY

STRANGE CASE IN PARIS.

A strange case of double personality in Paris has been brought to the notice of the Academy of Medicine by M. Marinesco. After a severe attack of pleurisy a young female law student lapsed into a long sleep. When she woke her memory was j completely gone. She had already passed several law examinations, but appeared on waking unable to understand a word of French, which she had previously written and spoken 'with perfect fluency. She seemed, in fact, to find herself in an unknown world, ; But what astonished the doctors in [ attendance most was the girl's knowledge of foreign languages, which she had never spoken befpre she went inIto her long sleep. She spoke fluently is no fewer than twelve. In writing, j however, she used her left hand : mii stead of her right, though she had never been known to write with her left hand before. After being carefully coached in French she has* learned it again as would a child, and, is still studying elementary arithmetic, although she used to be a good mathematician.

How during the girl's sleep she acquired twelve foreign tongues, and completely forgot her own, is a problem of sub-conscious personality which is being much debated by the members of the learned assembly.