LOSS OF MEMORY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21100, 6 February 1932, Page 3 (Supplement)

LOSS OF MEMORY.

I STRANGE CASE IN PARIS. I | A strange case of double personality in j Paris has been brought to the notice of | the Academy of Medicine by M. Man- ! • nesoo. After a severe attack of pleurisy > i a young female Jaw student, lapsed into j i 3 long sleep. When she woke her j memory -was completely gone. She had j j already passed several law examinations, j j but appeared on waking unable to under- ; stand a word of French, which she had j previously written and spoken with per- j feet fluency. She seemed, in fact, to ] find herself in an unknown world. But what most astonished the doctors [ in attendance was the girl's knowledge of j foreign languages, which she had never spoken before she went into her long sleep. She spoke fluently in no fewer than twelve. In writing, however, she used her left, hand instead of ber right, though she had never been known to write with j her left hanu before. After heme care- j fully roadbed in French she has learned j it, again as would a child, and is still ] studying elementary arithmetic, although j she used to be a good mathematician. How during the girl's sleep she acquired twelve foi-eign tongues and completely | forgot her own is a problem of sub-con- j scious personality which is being much 1 debated by the members ol the learned j assembly. '