DOUBLE LIVES.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 15116, 29 December 1921, Page 2

DOUBLE LIVES.

EXTRAORDINARY CASES. A SECOND SELF. One sometimes reads of extraordinary cases where-someone disappears writes Stephen Reynolds, (in Pear'son’s Weekly). After days, weeks, or even years, the missing person is found again, perhaps in another county, perhaps only a few miles away, but leading altogether a different existence. Su'ch cases have, time after time, supplied plots for all sorts of stories. Most of us have heard of Jekyll and Hyde. Even if we haven’t actually read the book, we know how the respectable and beloved Dr Jekyll of the day turned every night into the evil ruffian of Hyde. That particular case was, of course, fictitious, but scores of almost precisely similar instances are known to exist. The details of such cases, however, are generally kept, as far as possible, from the outside public, and are usually only known to the medical profession. A soldier was wounded in the head. An honest, hard-working man, he recovered, but with this peculiarity : every three weeks or so he would pass into a slight trance-like fit.

This only lasted a few minutes, but on waking from it, he would be no longer the same man. He became a rogue and a thief, this phase lasting for some days, when, with another little trance, he would resume his normal life.

The second state was really that of an exaggerated sleep-walking, in which the man was insensible to taste or smell.

While in his ordinary waking state he knew nothing about his “second self”; in his sleep-walking stage he was quite aware of all that he had been going in his ordinary life. To doctors these two states are known as the normal and the morbid.

In another ease practically the reverse happened. A man who was a quarrelsome, thievish rascal was one day badly scared by a viper, and passed into a fit. On “waking,” he had an entirely distinct “self,” being a gentle, honest, hard-working man, and with no memory at, all of his past. This stage lasted for a whole year, after which he resumed his old “self.” A very peculiar case was that of a lady of good family and education who went to bed in the ordinary way, and next morning woke up— an entirely different person. " She had forgotten —-everything. She had to be taught, as a child, to read, to write, everything. This morbid state lasted for some time, and then she went back to the old life, and for years the two states came alternately. All the while the outside world was kept in absolute ignorance of what was happening. During her normal life, the lady was able to attend to her social and domestic duties, and during the “morbid” periods she was always away, “ill.” ■One well-known case in the medical world was that of a young woman who happened to be extremely short-sighted. Every morning at 8 o’clock, almost to the minute, she lost consciousness for a few seconds, “woke up,” and immediately took her spectacles off. She could then see perfectly. In this state she was quite aware of everything she had done during the day, talked and laughed the evening through, and went to bed. In the morning she would again wake up, half-blind. This went on for a long-time. Probably, though,- the most peculiar of all these cases was that of a man of 30 or so. He would have a dream that he' was starting out on a long walk, and so intense was the “dream” that he would be compelled to get up and start walking. In this “dream state,” which had often occurred in his life, he had walked through several countries. He knew who he was, and all about himself, and the trouble that he was causing to his family, but till the fit was over, he was “bound” to go on walking. There was a something in his mind which compelled him to walk. When the something was ■■ satisfied, he would “wake up,” with no knowledge of where he had been or what he had been doing, and he would live the ordinary life of an ordinary man — till next time. These instances of dual personality are much more understood now than they were even a few years ago, when they were regarded as freaks that could not be explained at all. Doctors now know much more of the dream state, on which this kind of glorified sleep-walking depends.