Page:A case of double consciousness Albert Wilson 1904 MPD in a child.djvu/2

2 and knows nothing of the life or incidents of any other sub-stage. Each sub-stage or personality is, then, complete in itself.

But the abnormal had a faint glimmer of the normal. Perhaps this might be aided by overhearing conversation about herself. In the normal, however, she was absolutely ignorant of what happened in the abnormal. This applies also to physical suffering, for in one abnormal stage she was liable to toothache, and if she returned to the normal the toothache likewise disappeared.

These separate personalities were "switched" on and off without apparent rhyme or reason. Yet there was always some physical disturbance. It might be pallor and exhaustion of passing duration, or she might fall off a chair, becoming cataleptic or paralysed in the legs, or there might be loss of consciousness approaching coma. There never were epileptic fits, though about three times she had convulsions, and once or twice complete coma.

Among the varying personalities, there was to begin with more or less complete loss of all previous knowledge; whilst her character or Ego was much modified. Thus she might become an amiable child, or cruel and wicked, or a hopeless imbecile, blind and paralysed, a deaf mute, a maniac, or finally lose all sense of moral tone and responsibility, either to thieve or even to try to kill.

The patient was a bright, intelligent girl twelve and a half years of age at Easter, 1895, when first taken ill with influenza. There is no history to record except that there was great trouble shortly before her birth, when the home had to be broken up.

Though the influenza passed off in a week, yet she was left with an attack of meningitis, and remained in a serious condition for six weeks. There was a high temperature, intense headache aggravated by light and sound, and great weakness. In the third week she was delirious and maniacal. She had intense fear, chiefly of imaginary snakes. During the attacks, though so weak, she developed great strength. She was ravenous for oranges, and this detail indicated later that this was the first of the abnormal personalities. She was mentally blind in that she could not recognise people, yet a hand or any crease in the counterpane became to her a snake. In the fourth week fits occurred; first choreiform jerkings, then opis-