Multiple Ego Several Persons in One. 955 



of the former. A violent excitement or altercation is liable to bring on 

 the change. 



The following I condense from an account of the remarkable French 

 patient, known to the doctors as Louis V. which was written by Fred 

 W. H. Meyers, and published in Proceedings of "Society for Psychical 

 Research," also in 19th Century, 1886 : 



"Louis V. began life in 1863 as the neglected child of a turbulent 

 mother. He was sent to a reformatory at ten years old, and there 

 showed himself, as he has always done when his organization has given 

 him a chance, quiet, well behaved and obedient. Then, at 14 years old 

 he had a great i'right from a viper, a fright which threw him off his 

 balance and started the series of psychical oscillations, on which he has 

 been tossed ever since." His first symptoms were epilepsy and hyster- 

 ical paralysis of the legs, and at the asylum at Bonneval, whither he 

 was sent, he worked at tailoring steadily for a couple of months. Then 

 he suddenly had a hystero-epileptic attack, with 50 hours of convul- 

 sions and ecstacy, and when he awoke from it he was no longer para- 

 lyzed, no longer acquainted with tailoring, and no longer virtuous. He 

 had forgotten everything which had happened since his viper fright. 

 His character had become violent, greedy, and quarrelsome, and his 

 tastes were radically changed. Before this attack he had been a total 

 abstainer; he now not only drank his own wine, but stole the wine of 

 the other patients. He escaped from Bonneval, and fora few years had 

 a rough time, occasionally relapsing and getting into a hospital or asy- 

 lum, and was at one time at Bicetre in charge of Dr. Jules Voisin. 

 He became (it seems) a private of marines, committed a theft and was 

 convicted, but being regarded as insane, was sent to the Rochefort as} T - 

 lum. His condition there is thus described : " There is paralysis and 

 insensibility of the right side, and (as is often the case in right hemi- 

 plegia) the speech is indistinct and difficult. Nevertheless he is con- 

 stantly haranguing anyone who will listen to him, abusing his physi- 

 cians, or preaching with a monkey-like impudence, rather than with rea- 

 soned clearness, radicalism in politics, and atheism in religion. He 

 makes bad jokes, and if anyone pleases him he endeavors to caress him. 

 He remembers recent events during his residence at the Rochefort asy- 

 lum, but only two scraps of his life before that date ; naine^, his vi- 

 cious period at Bonneval, and a part of his stay at Bicetre. " This 

 strangely fragmentary memory is the remarkable circumstance in his 

 case. < ' The physicians of Rochefort were familiar with the efficacy of 

 the contact of metals in provoking transfer of hysterical hemiplegia 

 from one side to the other. They tried various metals in turn on Louis 

 Y. Lead, silver and zinc had no effect; copper produced a slight re- 

 turn of sensibility in the paralyzed arm. But steel applied to the right 



