560 The Outline of Science 



use in case he was buried alive. His sleep was greatly dis- 

 turbed, and his health became so bad that he was invalided 

 home. Instructions to keep his thoughts from the war and 

 to dwell exclusively on pleasant topics proved useless. He 

 had terrifying dreams of warfare, from which he would 

 awake, sweating profusely, and thinking he was dying. At 

 this stage he came under the care of Dr. Rivers. The 

 patient was asked to try and remember any dreams he might 

 have and to record any memories which came into his mind 

 while thinking over the dreams. Shortly afterwards he had 

 a dream, and as he lay in bed thinking it over there came 

 into his mind an incident which seemed to have happened 

 when he was about three years of age, and which had so 

 greatly affected him at the time that it now seemed to the 

 patient almost impossible that it could ever have been for- 

 gotten. He recalled that, as a little boy, he and his friends 

 used to visit an old man in a house near his own, and to take 

 him odd articles discarded at home, in return for which they 

 received a copper or two. On one occasion he went alone, 

 down the long, dark passage leading to the old man's home, 

 and on turning back found that the door at the opening of 

 the passage had banged to, and he was unable to escape. 

 Just then a dog in the passage began to bark savagely, and 

 the little child was terrified, and continued so until he was 

 released. After another dream the patient woke up to find 

 himself repeating "McCann! McCann!" It occurred to him, 

 suddenly, that this was the name of the old man. Inquiry 

 of the parents of the patient revealed the fact that an old 

 rag-and-bone man had lived in such a house as the patient 

 remembered, and that his name was McCann. 



The result of this recovery of memory, with the explana- 

 tion of his abnormal fears of closed-in spaces, had a great 

 effect on the patient. A few days afterwards he lost his 

 fear of closed-in spaces, and he afterwards travelled in tube 

 railways and tunnels without discomfort. Indeed, he was 

 so confident of himself at once that he wished Dr. Rivers 

 to lock him up in some subterranean chamber of the hospital 

 as a proof of his cure. The particular point to be noticed 

 here is that an entirely forgotten experience continued, ap- 



