RESTORING LOST MEMORY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20343, 26 August 1929, Page 13

RESTORING LOST MEMORY.

ITALIAN SAVANT'S CLAIM

EXTRAORDINARY TESTS MADE. Professor Calligaris, of Home University, according to the London Daily Telegraph, has put forward the extraordinary claim that by stimulating the nerves of the index finger or of the second toe in a special manner he is able to restore lost memory and reawaken the most distant recollections in the mind of a ■patient. He. has applied this theory in an effort to solve a baffling mystery of identity which has been occupying the Italian Courts for vears.

Professor Giulio Canella disappeared while serving in Macedonia during the. war, and was supposed to be dead. Vears afterwards a victim of lost memory confined in an asylum was joyfully recognised by the "widow" as her missing husband. They had not been living together long when it was claimed that the man was really Mario Bruneri, a person of a much humbler station in life than the rich Canella. and one who. moreover, had been sentenced to two years' imprisonment for theft.

Since then a legal battle has been raging round the mysterious individual, who is designated, in anthropological style, "the Collegno Man." from tlie place where he was found. At the first hearing the Court declared that he was neither Canella nor Bruneri. The Bruneri family appealed, and the Court decided in their favour. Now a counter-appeal has been lodged by the Collegno Man. who, not unnaturally, stoutly maintains he is Canella.

With this appeal still unheard. Professor Calligaris. as a result of his strange experiments. iVeonvineed that the mystery man is Canella. Professor Calligaris stimulated the patient's index finger in the prescribed manner for 25 hours, at the. end of which time he claims to have awakened memories of war-time incidents in Macedonia, which could not have happened to anyone but Canella. He supports his theory by the result of experiments with a woman medium, who. when given objects belonging to the mystery man, described the early life of the owner iti such a way as to show that he could not be Bruneri.