SYDNEY’S CHILD MAN.

Waipawa Mail, Volume L, Issue 130, 8 July 1929, Page 4

SYDNEY’S CHILD MAN.

MENTALLY SIX MONTHS OLD. WONDERFUL SURGERY. SYDNEY, June 27. A man with the brain of a child, learning to read and write, an old soldier, yet with no recollection of any of his life beyond the past few months- —such, in brief, is the record of James Madden, of Station street, Strathfield, whose case is at once a living tragedy and a marvel of modern surgery. In March, 1928, Madden’s body was found in a huddled heap at the foot of a 50ft. cliff between Cooktown and Cairns, in Queensland. There was ample evidence that the car he had driven at fast speed had skidded, hit a pole, and taken him over the awful drop. His skull was frightfully shattered, the left side being crushed in, and the wonder was that he was even alive. For four months he lay in a nearby house in a stupor, without having regained conscious life, and doctors, seizing a faint hope, had him removed carefully to Cairns. From there, in the hope that specialised treatment might restore his senses, he was brought lo Sydney and admitted to Sydney Hospital, where 19 specialists in all looked him over and pronounced the case hopeless. His brain was functioning automatically, but only like that of a lower animal, his right side was paralysed, and he xvas gradually losing his eyesight. He became a medical “exhibit,” and the opinion was that he must eventually become insane and die. He was at this time like a feeble-minded idiot, and caused many a sensation by wandering out into the street and demanding food. As a last desperate venture it was decided to operate, and a skilful Sydney surgeon lifted all the bone which was depressing the brain, cut it away, and left the brain covered only by its membrane and the skin of the scalp. It was necessary to lift half the scalp like a flap, and to handle the very brain itself.

The operation was carried out last | December, and it is' from that point that Madden actually dates his whole life. Beyond that he cannot go, though he knows everything that has happened since. He had to be taught to eat and Use his fingers, to talk, to read, and to write again. His friends have visited him, but, beyond accepting them at their face value, his blank memory holds for them no place. He does not even remember that he was a prominent business man in New South Wales before the accident, or that he went to the war and won a medal for bravery. The alphabet came easily to him, bill be finds it most difficult to read and form bis words. He learns the multiplication tables as a difficult feat, though before Ibe accident he was regarded as an expert at figures. His position is remarkable in that, at an age between 30 and 40 years, he is still only six months old. A week ago he had a fall and suffered acute head hemorrhage. That he did not die is a miracle again, for the loft side of his head is boneless, and a heavy knock there would certainly relegate him to mental twilight again, specialists believe. They agree that, suddenly, memory may return to him like a flash; but it is more likely that continuous treatment by mental specialists will be necessary to bring him to true realisation of what has gone before. Cases have been known in Sydney I where lost memory has been regained as a result of a severe shock, hut it is considered that in this instance prolonged courses of auto-suggestion and psycho-analysis will get better results. Madden, in the meantime, is a man with a one-way memory, and it will not travel backward. He is still a medical curiosity in Sydney, and submits to examination by wondering surgeons without the slightest sign of self-consciousness.