Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine [552]
exhaustive paper on this subject, written by Richard Hodgson in the proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, states that Mr. Bourne had in early life shown a tendency to abnormal psychic conditions; but he had never before engaged in trade, and nothing could be remembered which would explain why he had assumed the name A. J. Brown, under which he did business. He had, however, been hypnotized when young and made to assume various characters on the stage, and it is possible that the name A. J. Brown was then suggested to him, the name resting in his memory, to be revived and resumed when he again went into a hypnotic trance.
Alfred Binet describes a case somewhat similar to that of Mary Reynolds: "Felida, a seamstress, from 1858 up to the present time (she is still living) has been under the care of a physician named Azam in Bordeaux. Her normal, or at least her usual, disposition when he first met her was one of melancholy and disinclination to talk, conjoined with eagerness for work. Nevertheless her actions and her answers to all questions were found to be perfectly rational. Almost every day she passed into a second state. Suddenly and without the slightest premonition save a violent pain in the temples she would fall into a profound slumber-like languor, from which she would awake in a few moments a totally different being. She was now as gay and cheery as she had formerly been morose. Her imagination was over-excited. Instead of being indifferent to everything, she had become alive to excess. In this state she remembered everything that had happened in the other similar states that had preceded it, and also during her normal life. But when at the end of an hour or two the languor reappeared, and she returned to her normal melancholy state, she could not recall anything that had happened in her second, or joyous, stage. One day, just after passing into the second stage, she attended the funeral of an acquaintance. Returning in a cab she felt the period coming on which she calls her crisis (normal state). She dozed several seconds, without attracting the attention of the ladies who were in the cab, and awoke in the other state, absolutely at a loss to know why she was in a mourning carriage with people who, according to custom, were praising the qualities of a deceased person whose name she did not even know. Accustomed to such positions, she waited; by adroit questions she managed to understand the situation, and no one suspected what had happened. Once when in her abnormal condition she discovered that her husband had a mistress, and was so overcome that she sought to commit suicide. Yet in her normal mind she meets the woman with perfect equilibrium and forgetfulness of any cause for quarrel. It is only in her abnormal state that the jealousy recurs. As the years went on the second state became her usual condition. That which was at first accidental and abnormal now constitutes the regular center of her psychic life. It is rather satisfactory to chronicle that as between the two egos which alternately possess her, the more cheerful has finally reached the ascendant."
Jackson reports the history of the case of a young dry-goods clerk who was seized with convulsions of a violent nature during which he became unconscious. In the course of twenty-four hours his convulsions abated, and about the third day he imagined himself in New York paying court to a lady, and having a rival for her favors; an imaginary quarrel and duel ensued. For a half-hour on each of three days he would start exactly where he had left off on the previous day. His eyes were open and to all appearances he was awake during this peculiar delirium. When asked what he had been doing he would assert that he had been asleep. His language assumed a refinement above his ordinary discourse. In proportion as his nervous system became composed, and his strength improved, this unnatural manifestation of consciousness disappeared, and he ultimately regained his health.
A further example of this psychologic phenomenon was furnished quite meetly
Alfred Binet describes a case somewhat similar to that of Mary Reynolds: "Felida, a seamstress, from 1858 up to the present time (she is still living) has been under the care of a physician named Azam in Bordeaux. Her normal, or at least her usual, disposition when he first met her was one of melancholy and disinclination to talk, conjoined with eagerness for work. Nevertheless her actions and her answers to all questions were found to be perfectly rational. Almost every day she passed into a second state. Suddenly and without the slightest premonition save a violent pain in the temples she would fall into a profound slumber-like languor, from which she would awake in a few moments a totally different being. She was now as gay and cheery as she had formerly been morose. Her imagination was over-excited. Instead of being indifferent to everything, she had become alive to excess. In this state she remembered everything that had happened in the other similar states that had preceded it, and also during her normal life. But when at the end of an hour or two the languor reappeared, and she returned to her normal melancholy state, she could not recall anything that had happened in her second, or joyous, stage. One day, just after passing into the second stage, she attended the funeral of an acquaintance. Returning in a cab she felt the period coming on which she calls her crisis (normal state). She dozed several seconds, without attracting the attention of the ladies who were in the cab, and awoke in the other state, absolutely at a loss to know why she was in a mourning carriage with people who, according to custom, were praising the qualities of a deceased person whose name she did not even know. Accustomed to such positions, she waited; by adroit questions she managed to understand the situation, and no one suspected what had happened. Once when in her abnormal condition she discovered that her husband had a mistress, and was so overcome that she sought to commit suicide. Yet in her normal mind she meets the woman with perfect equilibrium and forgetfulness of any cause for quarrel. It is only in her abnormal state that the jealousy recurs. As the years went on the second state became her usual condition. That which was at first accidental and abnormal now constitutes the regular center of her psychic life. It is rather satisfactory to chronicle that as between the two egos which alternately possess her, the more cheerful has finally reached the ascendant."
Jackson reports the history of the case of a young dry-goods clerk who was seized with convulsions of a violent nature during which he became unconscious. In the course of twenty-four hours his convulsions abated, and about the third day he imagined himself in New York paying court to a lady, and having a rival for her favors; an imaginary quarrel and duel ensued. For a half-hour on each of three days he would start exactly where he had left off on the previous day. His eyes were open and to all appearances he was awake during this peculiar delirium. When asked what he had been doing he would assert that he had been asleep. His language assumed a refinement above his ordinary discourse. In proportion as his nervous system became composed, and his strength improved, this unnatural manifestation of consciousness disappeared, and he ultimately regained his health.
A further example of this psychologic phenomenon was furnished quite meetly