WHERE AND HOW WE REMEMBER, 615 



longer time to recall by tracing printed than written words. But this 

 was not bis only defect of memory. He found that many objects for- 

 merly perfectly familiar were no longer recognized by sight. He was 

 well acquainted with the streets of Paris, but on going out he now looked 

 at the houses and streets as at those of a new, unknown city, and he 

 was unable to find his way about. The loss of memory did not consist 

 simply in a failure to recognize objects seen, it involved his power to 

 call up to his mind objects formerly well remembered, places well 

 known, faces, scenes of his childhood, etc. The blindness in the right 

 half of both eyes indicated that the disease was situated in the poste- 

 rior part of the left half of the brain, for this has been found diseased 

 in nearly thirty cases of similar defects in vision in which an examina- 

 tion of the brain was made. The loss of memory of objects seen in- 

 dicated that in that part of the brain in which the perception by sight 

 occurs were located nerve-cells whose integrity was necessary to the 

 existence of the sight-memories lost. The case demonstrated conclu- 

 sively that sight-memories lie in the posterior part of the brain. The 

 mental vigor of this man was good. His other faculties, his other per- 

 ceptions and memories, were not affected. He was not paralyzed ; 

 but, as far as reading was concerned, he had been put back into the 

 exact condition in which he was when as a boy he began to learn to 

 read. And when the writer saw him last, in the wards of Charcot's 

 great hospital in Paris, he was studying away at his alphabet like a 

 school-boy of six years.* 



This is not an isolated case. In the same hospital, at the same 

 time, was another gentleman who had been remarkable for the excel- 

 lence of his memory. It had always been possible for him to ac- 

 quire easily, and he had only to read a passage carefully in order to 

 remember it verbatim. He also had considerable talent in sketching, 

 and was in the habit of drawing any figure or view which pleased his 

 eye. His memory of music, or of things heard, was less active and 

 reliable than his visual memory. One day he suddenly noticed a 

 peculiar change in his power of mental action, which alarmed him 

 very much. He found that everything about him seemed strange and 

 unfamiliar. His visual memory was entirely gone, so that he no 

 longer recognized objects or faces, and could not call up to his mind 

 the forms or colors of well-known things. The town in which he lived 

 seemed an unknown place. Ho looked at its streets, its houses, its 

 statues with curiosity, as at those of a strange city. The same was 

 true of Paris, to which he came for medical advice, and where to his 

 surprise he could not find his way about. At the same time he lost 

 the power to sketch, being unable to remember the object to be drawn 

 long enough to draw it, and being unable to recall the appearance of 

 lines and shading in a picture. He found that he could not recall the 

 faces of his wife and children, and when they came to him he only 



* This case was fully reported by Charcot, in the " ProgrSs Mddicale," May, 1888. 



