The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-10-11
RESTORED To MEMORY.

!
RESTORED TO MEMORY.
After "a Twenty Years Blank the
Soldier Remembers Past Events.
After the battle of Bull Run, when
the whole country was holding up it's
hands in dismay and breathing hard
in the first realization that the war
was not after all to be picnic for the
northern troops. I, together with many
other doctors and surgeons, rushed
into Washington from distant cities. [
was taken one rainy night, by kind
old negro woman, to her cabin on the
edge of the city She came to me in
tears. "Doctah, 1 des visit yoh come
an see my John. He pears mon sous
cui'ous, an he act des like ne
'stracted." At her cabin / found her
son, a tremendous fellow, as black as
a coal and evidently an athlete, with
no evidence of a wound upon him, but
| with a tendency to bear off to one
| side as he walked, an apparent inabili-
| ty to talk and possessed of an effort
to march and keep time to martial mu-
| sic, which he could not do.
Aunt Martha, as she called herself
her son had always been strong and
healthy and that when he left Wash
| ington with the army he was perfectly
sound and ''des like de res of de folks,
! but dey fetch him back to his po ole
| nanny des like yoh see him, doctah,
| an / des skeered plumb outen my wits,
dat I is" I examined John carefully
and could find not the least thing the
matter with him. and half believed he
was Shamming. The room was white
washed and l noticed a streak entirely
around it that was so evenly drawn
that it attracted my attention, but in
the stirring events of those days [
really paid scant heed to so trif1ing
case as Johns and so apparently
trivial an indication as was that level
streak on the wall. His mother was
still talking.
DE reason dat all de table an cheers
is in the floor doctah, is dat John he
des runs inter all of 'em If dey close
| to de wall. Pears like he des 'bleeged
t. skim along close up as cher he kin.
Dat dar streak is whar his elbow
scrapes along all day an all night,
'cep when somebody's sittin' holdin' his
ham or feelin' his pulst, like yoh is
now"
Young and inexperienced as I was,
even this did not give me clew, and
I left Aunt Martha and John, after
1 SINlllS SOinc lIlllllS dQVICS oIlO ICLICdy,
both of which knew to be innocuous.
l spent several years in Paris and in
/ Germany after the war, and it was
not until 1873 that I was back in
| Washington. We had an International
convention there at the time, and were
taken to various public institutions.
| among which was a little asylum for
poor negroes. In one room, as we
were passing the door, l happened to
observe on the whitewashed wall a
| Well-worn streak drawn so level and
| circling the room so perfectly that it
called to my mind vision I had
wholly forgotten. Memory was COM
ing back to me, and slowly taking up
the threads of the war days, when one
| of the resident physicians, who had
missed me and returned, said, as he
joined me at the grated door:
| Strange case. He has been like that
for years. No one knows why. He is
| perfectly harmless, perfectly helpless
as to taking care of himself, and he
! walks and walks, day and night, and
! always bears to the left. IF we let
him out he'd bear off to the left and go
in the river or the fire, or lose himself
| in the woods. He never talks although
| we have never found anything the
matter with him. He eats and sleeps
pretty well. Strange case"
Before noon the next day we had
Johns small room looking like a hos
| pital operating room, and the great
black frame lay on the table under the
influence of ether. Five of us stood
around him and I told them my theo-
ries and plans My colleagues warmed
| to the idea.
cut open the right side of the thick
skull and sure enough splintered
piece of bone from an old depressed
fracture pressed into the brain. lifted
| cn5 Mi nd ,oJo
ed the skull and scalp and placed him
| in his bed. Then we set about reviv-
| ing him. We were all intensely anXi-
| Gus to know what the result would be,
and five notebooks were ready in five
| hands. Presently John opened his eyes
and stared about him. Then he asked,
| and it was the first articulate word he
/ had uttered in over twenty long years.
"Whar did de army move to yister-
day."
l was too excited to reply and no one
else appeared to grasp the meaning of
| his question. Presently | said:
Toward Richmond, John. But you
were hurt trife and had to stay be-
hind, and we have been doctoring you.
You are all right now. How do you
feel?"
''Fus rate, thankee, sir; fus rate
| Which side licked Yesterday. Ourn?"
Yes, John. But you must not talk
now. I'll tell you all about it tomor-
row."
l stayed in Washington to watch his
case and ask him some questions, but
he never understood one of them. The
battle of Bull Run had been ''yister-
day to him, and if he had dreamed,
| the dreams had taken flight at the
| touch of the knife and fed from the
lifted skull.
When he began to walk he had no fur
Their tendency to trend to the left. His
health, which was always good, en-
abled him to recupeTate with great
speed from the operation, and he IS
| today supporting Aunt Martha by driv-
ing the carriage of one Of the best
known senators at the capital. 1 still
look upon John as about my most val
liable piece of stage property, so to
speak, in surgery.
Il There has never come a glimmer of
: memory to him of the twenty odd years
that he was mere circling automaton.
The war and his experience up to that
j time when ne was struck on the head,
most likely by a piece of spent shell,
are as if they were yesterday in his
memory, and his mind is as clear and
good as the average of his race and
condition, but where that mind was and
/ how it was occupied during those years
is q never-failing query to me, all the
more, perhaps. because it does not
trouble or puzzle him in the least
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