The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-08
SOME ODD CASES
 < 0F DUAL SELF Double Personality Seems to
 Be a Real Thing THE LOSS OF MEMORY It Is nm Accepted Fact That HalIucf- nations Are the Read Thing to
 the Person Who Has
THE LOSS OF MEMORY
the London Daily Graphic.

From the London Daily Graphic.
 We may accept as quite we'll established the fact that Authorizations, to people
 who have them, are real things, and that loss of memory is a real thing, and that
 double personality is real thing.
 Of the loss of memory many cases are
 familiar. One of the most curious was
 that of a man who had been a cork cut
 ter in England and went out to America,
 leaving a family behind him. He was
 wrecked and lost all memory of his for
 mer life. He became well-to-do and pros porous, and it was only by the accident
 of going over cork-cutting factory that
 he recovered the clew to his former per-
 sonality. His thinking brain which di-
 rects muscular action enabled him by an
 act of unconscious memory to cut cork -an act which no unpracticed person
 could do. It was clear then that he had
 once been a cork cutter, and the insti-
 tuition of further inquiries finally iden-
 tified him.
 To return, however, to the cases of du-
 plex personality. The first one recorded
 historically is that of youth named So-
 gel, in Bavaria, who was an epileptic
 and in one of the relapses into a criminal
 frame of mind which followed on his
 epileptic seizures killed a wood cutter.
 He made no attempt to defend or hide
 his act, but childishly explained it. He
 continued thus for week after the crime,
 when his first personality was restored
 to him. He then completely forgot all the
 occurrences that had preceded or fol- lowed the murder. Although his case took
 place v ,rly 100 years ago, his judges were convifs-d of his innocence. Sogel after
 ward died in lunatic asylum.
 The larger number of these instances of dual personality follow on epilepsy,
 but one is recorded of Dr. Drewry of Virginia in 1S96. of MT. K. MT. K, while Apparently in perfect health, went to a northern town to transact some business, which he did quite ably and
 nationally. He then disappeared. He was given up for dead. Then six months B afterward he was found, brought home
 again, changed man In mind and body. The six months interval was blank to him and always remained so. He had spent them as an odd job man In a southern state. His recovery dated from the breaking down of a growth in his
 auditory canal which had undoubtedly
 affected his brain in a physical sense. But of the more curious cases of double personality, which did not begin
 and leave off suddenly, but which en- dured for number of years, there are
 n number of instances. One was of Miss
 Mary Reynolds. who for 15 or 16 years had two states of existence, in one of
 which she was melancholy, morb Id young woman, and in the other a gay,
 hysterical, mischievous child.
 The alterations, in which the child state lasted from five to six weeks, con- tinued at interya1e of varying length for 15 or 16 years, but finally ceased when she attained the age of 35 or 3s, leaving her permanently in her second ary or acquired state. The emotional | opposition of the two states had, how ever, become gradually reduced, and the l third state at which she arrived was
 a rational state, removed from both of them.
 ality, of which the best known is that of the epileptic Louise Vive, whose diff ferent states were distinguished by dif- ferent forms of paralysis, as well as by entirely different moral proclivities, and there Is the curious case of Miss Beau champ, a patient of Dr. Morton Prince. Miss Beauchamp was a neurasthenic pul cleNoT yOuHB WomaN, WnO over worked at college She was of a mor-
 bidly conscientious and rather reserved disposition. She was hypnotized in or der to try the power of suggestion, and out of one of these hypnotic frances
 emerged new Miss Beauchamp-a per- son entirely different in manners, ideals, education and temperament. This new Miss Beauchanlp was called Sally Beauchamp, and one. of the peculiarities of her mischievous temper was a pro- found dislike of the "other Miss Beau champ" The case is too complex and too curious for complete summary here, but 1t presents the amazing fact that In
 one brain may reside the possibility of
 the existence of two entirely different beings, different in mind, thought, dis position, health and temper. "
 Last week a magistrate was called on to deal with the case of young man
 who was normally sober, industrious and
 honest. but who in an interval of relapse from his normal self and consciousness committed a theft The young man had been an epileptic, and 1t was suggested in his defense that he had been and still was subject to states of mind in which his usual, normal, honest self had no ex- istence for him. He forgot 1t. He was, in fact, another person. He had another Isbrain, smother mind. The magistrate was broad-minded enough to accept this |explanation which to psychologists and to specialists in diseases of the brain is 8 perfectly just and reasonable one.