Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 49.djvu/839

Rh eight weeks—how he got away from there was all confused; since then it had been a blank. The last thing he remembered about the store was going to bed on Sunday night, March 13, 1887."

Some of these statements are true and others are not. He was never in Newton, N. H., in his life, and never engaged in any kind of trade. He had been a carpenter, farmer, and itinerant evangelist. His first wife did die in 1881, but he had married again; of his second wife the Brown personality never had any knowledge.

The nature of this change of personality is now fairly clear. The greater part of Ansel Bourne's memories were obliterated; the few that remained had lost all organic connection with one another, and gave rise to illusions of memory. Probably his new name and his notion that he had engaged in the lumber and trading business sprang from confused recollections of his own name and of his trade as a carpenter. But there was no material change in the active side of his nature. His character and instincts remained pretty much what they had been before. Further inquiry showed that he had had several epileptiform "fainting fits" within the last few years, and had been early in life the subject of a sudden loss of sight, hearing, and speech, followed by a "miraculous" cure.

Another typical case is that of Félida X. This girl was first seen by Dr. Azam, of Bordeaux, in June of 1858. She was then about fifteen years old. About two years before hysterical symj)toms had appeared; between her fourteenth and fifteenth years, at intervals of four or five days, and especially after some emotional excitement, she would feel a pain in the temples, followed by overpowering drowsiness. After an apparent sleep of ten minutes or so she would awake in a secondary state. It would last an hour or two, and then she would pass into her ordinary condition through a period of unconsciousness, as before.

In the primary state she was perfectly sane, was intelligent, resolute, and diligent, but taciturn, gloomy, even morose. She was not affectionate, was inclined to dwell upon her condition, and suffered much from pains of obscure origin. In the second state she was gay, hummed a tune over her sewing, was quick of movement, vivacious, fond of visiting, was emotionally sensitive and generally flighty. Her pains were much better. In her first state she remembered all her childhood and what had happened during other occurrences of the same state, but nothing of the second. In the second, however, her memory was complete, embracing the first as well as the second. She then spoke of her primary condition as her "attacks" (crises) or as that "stupid state" (cet état bête). Occasionally a third state made its appearance. The transition was as above described, but in it she seemed