St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1892-10-15
TALES ABOUT MEMORY.
Odd Anecdotes Regarding Men and
Birds and Lobster.

''When was examining to come up for
/ the finals said Il young doctor in charge
| of surgical ward in Bellevue Hospital
! the other day, al found that, do the best
! | could, | couldn't remember much more
! than half of the technical details of the
| books. | tried at first to commit them
| to memory by determined study, and
was only partly successful Then trird
the method of association of ideas, or the
order of the letters in the words, and did
only little better by that scheme. 1t
seems that the other students were
troubled the same way, for after the cX-
animation l found that l was among the
first five in my class. Since | have been
here, l have met one of the men that you
sometimes hear of who are troubled by
remembering nearly everything that
has ever come under their notice.
ale is middle-aged German who I'M
dcrwent a severe surgical operation in
the hospital four weeks ago. He was I'M
der ether nearly two hours longer than
the visiting surgeon considered safe in
the majority of instances. They had
slight hopes of his recovery, but ran the
FISK, lot he Woulu have Sulcly ttlCu IL uC
hadn't been operated upon.
ale came out of it all right" said the
doctor, ''and told me that the experience
had been relief to him. 1t was the very
first time in his experience that he had
not been distressed, with remembering
an endless string of events that he had
known. He said that he never forgot
anything. His memory disturbed him in
his sleep by receiving all sorts of discon-
nected circumstances. After he had got
strong he left the hospital with his old
and peculiar disorder.
The Mail and Expressman had an
interesting chat with the surgeon, who
has made a rather extended study Of the
phenomena of memory. Said the doc
tor: "In spite of all the study that has
been given to this interesting subject, |
don't believe there is any one who really
understands it. | compelled myself to
memorize this definition of memory from
a book on Medical Physiology but it
doesn't mean much to me. Memory is
the concentration of waves of mollecu
cerebral action in concentration with the
hyperbo- metaphysical vibrations of tonic
structure, arising in the gray matter of
the medulla oblongata and terminating
in the corpus callosum. This combina-
ton awakens a spontaneous ccrebration
and gives rise to the phenomena of mem
ory.' at strikes me-" said the doctor,
"that this writer would have put his
ideas in little different language if he
had well understood what he was talking
about"
Haven't you ever found a system of
mnemonics that has been useful to you?"
asked the writer.
1.-The best method that | know of is to
put any difficult catalogue of names that
one wants to remember into rhyme. |
know I committed the names of the
cranial nerves to memory by learning
this rhyme:
On old Monadnock's peaked tops
A Fin and German picked some hops.
"You know, the first letter of each
word is the initial letter of one of these
nerves There are scores of useful
rhymes like this.
But it has been my experience con-
tinued the doctor, "that the surest way
to remember thing is not to pass it by
until you have become thoroughly ia
miliar with its particulars. listened to
lecture on memory the other evening
by well-known physician, who argued
that the secret Of good memory is in