DUAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 279 



At length a day came when she uttered her first words 

 in this her second life. She had learned to take heed of 

 objects and persons around her ; and on one occasion, 

 seeing her mother excessively agitated, she became excited 

 herself, and suddenly, yet hesitatingly, exclaimed, ' What's 

 the matter? ' After this she began to articulate a few words. 

 For a time she called every object and person ' this,' then 

 gave their right names to wild flowers (of which she had 

 been passionately fond when a child), and rhis ' at a time 

 when she exhibited not the least recollection of the " old 

 familiar friends and places " of her childhood.' The gradual 

 expansion of her intellect was manifested chiefly at this 

 time in signs of emotional excitement, frequently followed 

 by attacks of spasmodic rigidity and insensibility. 



It was through the emotions that the patient was re- 

 stored to the consciousness of her former self. She became 

 aware that her lover was paying attention to another woman, 

 and the emotion of jealousy was so strongly excited, that 

 she had a fit of insensibility which resembled her first 

 attack in duration and severity. But it restored her to her- 

 self. * When the insensibility passed off, she was no longer 

 spell-bound. The veil of oblivion was withdrawn ; and, as 

 if awakening from a sleep of twelve months' duration, she 

 found herself surrounded by her grandfather, grandmother, 

 and their familiar friends and acquaintances. She awoke 

 in the possession of her natural faculties and former know- 

 ledge ; but without the slightest remembrance of anything 

 which had taken place in the year's interval, from the in- 

 vasion of the first fit to the [then] present time. She spoke, 

 but she heard not ; she was still deaf, but being able to 

 read and write as formerly, she was no longer cut off from 

 communication with others. From this time she rapidly 

 improved, but for some time continued deaf. She soon 

 perfectly understood by the motion of her lips what her 

 mother said ; they conversed with facility and quickness to- 

 gether, but she did not understand the language of the lips 

 of a stranger. She was completely unaware of the change 



