Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/476

460 or heard, and altogether resembled a child more than a grown person.

In a short time she became rather more sedate, and her attention could be longer fixed on one object. Her memory too, so entirely lost as far as regarded previous knowledge, was soon found to be most acute and retentive with respect to everything she saw or heard subsequently to her disorder; and she has by this time recovered many of her former acquirements, some with greater, others with less facility. With regard to these, it is remarkable that though the process followed in regaining many of them apparently consisted in recalling them to mind with the assistance of her neighbors, rather than in studying them anew, yet even now she does not appear to be in the smallest degree conscious of having possessed them before.

At first it was scarcely possible to engage her in conversation; in place of answering a question she repeated it aloud in the same words in which it was put, and even long after she came to answer questions she constantly repeated them once over before giving her reply. At first she had very few words, but she soon acquired a great many, and often strangely misapplied them. She did this, however, for the most part in particular ways; she often, for instance, made one word answer for all others, which were in any way allied to it; thus in place of "tea," she would ask for "juice," and this word she long used for liquids. For a long time also in expressing the qualities of objects, she invariably, where it was possible, used the words denoting the very opposite of what she intended. And thus she would say "white" in place of "black," "hot" for "cold," etc. She would often also talk of her arm when she meant her leg, her eye when she meant her tooth, etc. She now generally uses her words with propriety, although she is sometimes apt to change their terminations, or compose new ones of her own.

She has as yet recognized no person, not even her nearest connections; that is to say, she has no recollection of having seen or known them previously to her illness, though she is aware of having seen them since, and calls them either by their right names or by those of her own giving; but she knows them only as new acquaintances, and has no idea in what relation they stand to herself. She has not seen above a dozen people since her illness, and she looks on these as all that she has ever known.

Among other acquirements she has recovered that of reading; but it was requisite to begin her with the alphabet, as she at first did not know a single letter. She afterward learned to form syllables and small words, and now she reads tolerably well, and has shown herself much interested in several stories previously unknown to her, which she has read since her recovery. The reacquisition of her reading was eventually facilitated by singing the words of familiar songs, from the printed page, while she played on the piano. In learning to write she