The Savannah morning news., 1902-06-09
THE MAN WHO FORGOT.
From the Kew YORK Sun.

From the New York Sun.
Nav 10 before daybreak a we'll
dressed stranger stood on the wharf at
Rockland, Ne. and asked when the
next boat for Boston would leave. He
,ould not remember how he came to
Pockland. A Boston boat had just
come and gone. EIe thought that per-
baps he might have been a passenger
m her Pretty soon it dawned upon
him that his memory was lost. Who
Was he? What was his name? He
asked in vain. In his overcoat pocket
vas a notebook with the name &C. E.
Brown" On his collar were the init
ials &c. e. B." He inferred that his
name was c. e. Brown. From Rock
land he went to West Bath, where he
Ioarded for two weeks in farmhouse
He said that he had been a carpenter
i'm Roxbury, Mass, and had taken a
vacation on account of ill health His
memory of events during these two
weeks was entirely good. but he had
no memory of a past any longer than
that. He had some dim remembrance
of having had a dizzy feeling and a
feeling of pressure around the head
ne went to Bath and Brunswick fire.
ouently and bought the Boston papers
10 see if they could help him find him
self. A Brunswick doctor examined
him and declared him perfectly sane.
Nothing was snapt but the memory
&C. e B." couldn't recall the assas-
sination of Mr.. Mckinley or the erup-
ZION of Mont Pelee. Arithmetic geog-
raphy and history were a blank to him
He could speak and write good Eng
lish. In a barber shop he didn't know
how much to pay the barber. He
prowled about the shops of Bath and
brunswick trying to find out what his
occupation was. Stores had no inter
est for him. Building had. He decided
that he must have been an architect
or a builder.
From the descriptions and pictures
of the man in the Boston papers Miss
Anna T Church of X street, South
Boston, thought she knew him. She
went to Brunswick and found that &c.
E Brown" was her nephew, Charles
E. BuzZell, a well-to-do dairyman and
deputy sheriff of Darlington. N. H. He
didn't recognize her, but asked if she
lived in X street. Her answer con-
WINGED him that she was his aunt and
encouraged him to believe that he
would recover his memory in time. 1t
seems that his father was a carpenter
and he had worked in his fathers shop.
c. z. Brown is one of Mr.. Buzzell's
employees. Mr.. Buzzell left his home
on May and all attempts to find him
failed His aunt has taken him to his
family. Whether he has yet fully re-
covered his memory we are not in
formed.
The psychologists are familiar with
such cases of what is called alter
mating personality" A man forgets his
former and habitual self and appears
as another person. all memory of his
earlier existence RACED. The case of
Ansel Bourne, examined carefully by
Prof William James, is a good exam
pie Like Mr.. Buzzell, Bourne had
been a carpenter. He dabbled
in atheism, but was convert
of an itinerant preacher. Jan.
Il. 1887, Ansel Bourne drew 1851 out Of
a Providence bank. That day Ansel
Bourne ceased to exist for a time.
When he came to himself he had been
keeping a shop in Norristown, Pa, for
six weeks under the name of "a. ].
Brown" He didn't know where he was
or how he got there. He remembered
getting that check cashed, but he re-
membered little else between Jan. II
and March. In January, 1890, Prof.
James hypnotized him and got him to
tell what he had been doing in the
weeks that seemed to him to have Slip
ped from his memory altogether.
These lapses of consciousness and
losses of self, this failure of the mem
ory, involve grave and mysterious
problems. The case of Ansel Bourne
has been cited by Mr.. Andrew Lang as
parallel with that of DR.. Manette in
THE Tale of Two Cities" Strong ex-
element or grief drove or had a ten
dency to drive DR.. Manette back to
the cobblers bench, to make him forget
his daughter. his actual personality and
profession, and to make him again the
cobbling prisoner of the North Tower
of the Bastille. His alternating per-
sonality' was recurrent or inclined to
be recurrent, thereby differentiating it
self from that of Bourne. Buzzell was
not, perhaps. strictly speaking, a case
OF alternating personality. He had
forgotten Buzzell, but as Brown he was
madly inquiring who and what he was.
He was cropping after his original per-
sonality and had not developed a Sec
ond ons