LOST MEMORY

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3444, 17 March 1932, Page 6

LOST MEMORY

FORGOT HER OWN LANGUAGEGIRL WHO KNEW MANY OTHERS A young Frenchwoman who can speak 12 foreign languages, but has lost command of her own, is engaging the attention of the French Academy of Medicine. A report of her case was submitted to the startled academicians by M. Martinesco, who conceals the woman's identity under the initials "P.M." She suffered from loss of memory after an attack of pleurisy, and remained in a trance-like condition for some

time. Then she woke with "the mind of a child." She could not speak French, or use the simplest articles with the least dexterity. But in a few days she began to speak slowly in 12 foreign languages, of which she had been in complete ignorance before her illness. A little later, she wrote with her left hand, although previously she had used her right. Several psychologists, members of the Academy, are of the opinion that Mile. P.M.'s illness stimulated an unconscious area of her brain which had received a set of perfect but involuntary impressions of which she was totally unaware. In other words, she had heard the foreign languages spoken and retained the words in her subconscious mind.