SCIENCE. 



45i 



trifling incidents appear distinctly before them. One 

 person in particular, declared that he saw his' whole ex- 

 istence rolled out in retrograde succession, not like a 

 mere indistinct sketch, but in precise details, making a 

 panorama of his life, in which every act was accompanied 

 by a feeling of pleasure or pain. 



An analogous circumstance relates to a man of re- 

 markable intelligence who happened to cross a railroad 

 track just as an express train approached. He had just 

 time to throw himself lengthwise between the rails. As 

 the train passed over him, the sense of his danger caused 

 every incident in his life to suddenly rise before him in 

 memory. 



Even allowing for possible exaggerations, these fac's 

 reveal a hyper-activity of the memory, of which in a 

 normal state we can form no idea. 



I will quote one more instance, due to stupefaction 

 from opium, and at the same time I will beg the reader 

 to observe how well it confirmed the explanation of the 

 mechanism of recollection given in another chapter. 



" It seems to me," says DtOuincy in his celebrated 

 Confessions, " that I have lived seventy years or a whole 

 century in one night. The most trivial events of my 

 youth, forgotten scenes belonging to my early years, were 

 constantly brought before me. It cannot be said that I 

 remembered them, for had they been mentioned to me 

 while awake, I should not have been capable of recalling 

 a single one of them as forming a part of my previous 

 existence. But placed before me as they were in a 

 dream, like so many intuitions, made up of the most 

 vague circumstances and their accompanying sentiments, 

 I recognized them instantly." 



All these general excitations are transitory. They 

 endure no longer than the causes which produce them. 

 Does permanent hypermnesia exist ? If the word can be 

 accepted in this rather forced sense, it must be applied 

 to those singular developments ot the memory which are 

 the continuation of some chance accident. In ancient 

 authors we find many cases of this kind related. We 

 have no reason to doubt them, for modern investigators, 

 Romberg among others, have noted a wonderful and 

 permanent development of the memory, following small- 

 pox, etc. The mechanism of this transformation being 

 impenetrable, we have, however, no reason to insist upon 

 it. 



Partial exaltations are by their very nature limited. 

 The ordinary tone of the memory being maintained in its 

 generality, everything beyond this can be easily ascer- 

 tained. These forms of hypermnesia are the necessary 

 co-relatives of partial amnesia. 



In the production of partial hypermnesia there is noth- 

 ing resembling a fixed law. It presents itself under the 

 form of isolated facts, that is to say, it is the result of a 

 series of conditions which escape us. Why is a certain 

 group of cells forming a particular dynamic association 

 put in motion sooner than another ? We can give no rea- 

 son, neither a physiological nor a psychological one. 

 The only cases wherein we can affirm the appearance of 

 a fixed law, are those of which we shall speak later, 

 where several languages return successively to the mem- 

 ory. 



Partial exaltations generally spring from morbid causes. 

 But sometimes they occur in a healthy state. Here are 

 two examples : 



" A lady in the last stages of a chronic malady was 

 taken from London into the country. Her little daughter, 

 who was a baby, not yet able to speak, was brought with 

 her, and after a short interview, was taken back to the 

 city. A few days later the lady died. The child grew 

 up without having any recollection of her mother. When 

 she had attained maturity, however, she had occasion to 

 see the room in which her mother died. Although she 

 was ignorant of this fact, she trembled as she crossed the 

 threshold. On being asked the cause of her emotion, she 

 replied : ' I have a distinct impression of having been in 



this room before. There was a lady in bed here in this 

 corner. She seemed to be very ill, and she bent over 

 me, weeping.' "' 



" A man endowed with a highly artistic temperament 

 (observe this point) accompanied some friends to a castle 

 somewhere in Sussex. He had no recollection of ever 

 having been there before. On approaching the entrance 

 he had a sudden vivid impression ot having already seen 

 it, and, with the remembrance of the door came also a 

 recollection of people above and beneath the portico, 

 together with some donkeys standing by. As this con- 

 viction grew upon him more and more, he questioned his 

 mother, thinking she, perhaps, might be able to 

 enlighten him. She told him that when he was about 

 sixteen months old he had been in the neighborhood with 

 a large party of people, that he had been carried in a 

 basket upon a donkey to the castle and left down stairs 

 with the servants and their donkeys while the other 

 members of the party had installed themselves above the 

 portico to eat their dinner."' 2 



The mechanism of recollection in these two cases 

 does not admit of any ambiguity. It is a revival, by con- 

 tiguity, after a long interval. They present that which 

 happens throughout every instant of life in a striking and 

 uncommon form. In order to recover a lost recollection 

 have not many of us returned to the spot where the idea 

 arose, endeavored to place ourselves as nearly as possible 

 in the same material situation and thus see the remem- 

 brance spring to life ? 



As to hypermnesia arising from a morbid cause I will 

 give one example. 



" At the age of four years, a child submitted to trefin- 

 ing in consequence of fracturing its cranium. When his 

 health was quite restored he had no recollection of the 

 accident or the operation. But at the age of fifteen, 

 while suffering from delirious fever, he described the 

 operation to his mother, mentioning the physicians and 

 those present, the details of their dress, and other minute 

 particulars, with the utmost exactitude. Up to this time he 

 had never spoken of the matter nor had he heard any one 

 mention it." 3 



The revival of languages completely forgotten deserves 

 to be spoken of more at length. The instance reported 

 by Coleridge is so hackneyed that I shall not repeat it. 

 There are many others of the same kind which are to be 

 found in the writings of Abercrombie, Hamilton and 

 Carpenter. Anaesthetic sleep produced by chloroform or 

 ether can produce the same effects as febrile excitation. 

 " An old forester lived during his youth on the frontier 

 of Poland, and spoke scarcely anything but Polish. Later 

 he removed to German territories. His children testified 

 that for thirty to forty years he had neither heard nor 

 pronounced a single Polish word. During an anaesthetic 

 sleep of about two hours this man spoke, prayed and 

 sang fluently in Polish. 4 



A still more curious thing is the regressive recollection 

 of several languages. Unfortunately, the authors who 

 have mentioned this use the term and note the fact with- 

 out properly interpreting either. 



The most interesting case was observed by Dr. Rush, 

 of Philadelphia. An Italian named Dr. Scandella, a 

 man of remarkable learning, resided in America. He 

 was a complete master of the Italian, English and French 

 languages. He took the yellow fever, and died of it in 

 New York. In the beginning of his illness he spoke 

 nothing but English. AUer that only French, and on the 

 day of his death, Italian — his native language. 



The same writer speaks in rather confused terms of a 

 woman who was subject to transitory attacks of acute 

 mania. When first seized she always spoke very poor 



1 Abercrombie. "* Essay on Intellectual Powers." 



2 Carpenter. Mental Physiology. 



3 Abercrombie. Work before quoted. 



* M. Duval. Hypnotisms daus le Nouveau diet de Medicine, p. 144, 



