Men With Poor Memories.

Hastings Standard, Issue 51, 25 June 1896, Page 4

Men With Poor Memories.

An amusing instance of aphasi".(or an inability to express thought by speech) was that of an old country gentleman, who retained in his employ a large number of servants, most of whom he had known since childhool. Wishing one day to sa lienly summon his butler, he found that the man's name had for the moment, as he thought, escaped him. Ha determine 1 , to call his footman, but to his surprise he dis covered that he could no more remember the man's name than the butler's. He was all the more astonished when he founl that ha ha l entirely forgotten the names of every man and woman in his service. ]Je had also forgotten the names of his most intimate acquaintances, and so set about providing substitutes. Every man was known by bis pecUi'irities ; certain persons of rnnk in the neicrhborhootl he called the " kin 7 " or the " queen," or the " grand vizier," his butler and footman were " Old Waiter" and " Yount; Waiter." Another curious instance of aphasia was that of a famous Berlin physician. He was sitting in his study one morning, writing a receipt for a bill, when suddenly, after having written two words, he lost all sense of their meaning. He tried to write on, but found he could think of no word. He threw down his pen in despair, and attempted to speak, but was equallly unsuccessful. This was one of these cases, however, which soon pass off, and in a short time he was able to finish the receipt. A very similar catastrophe happened to a French physician who was reading a medical work at the time. He suddenly found that he was unable to understand the meaning of the works he was reading. He attempted first to speak an 1 then to write, but without success. He discovered, however, on trying to exercise his limbs that he could use them as well as ever. Meanwhile he had been exerting all his professional knowledge to reason oat the cause of his calamity with the result that, on a doctor being summoned, he indicated by signs that hp wished to be bled, and in a short fc'.me he recovered.