It was the case of a young woman living in Pennsylvania in 1811. After a deep sleep of about twenty hours she had totally forgotten her entire past and everything she had learnt; even the words she spoke had lost their meaning. She no longer knew her relatives. Slowly she re-learnt to read and write, but her writing was from right to left. More striking still was the change in her character. Instead of being melancholy she was now cheerful to the extreme. Instead of being reserved she was buoyant and sociable. Formerly taciturn and retiring, she was now merry and jocose. Her disposition was totally changed.[1]
In this state she renounced her former retired life, and liked to undertake adventurous excursions unarmed, through wood and mountain on foot and horseback. In one of these excursions she encountered a large black bear, which she took for a pig. The bear raised himself on his hind legs and gnashed his teeth at her. As she could not drive her horse on any further, she took an ordinary stick and hit the bear until it took to flight. Five weeks later, after a deep sleep, she returned to her earlier state with amnesia for the interval. These states alternated for about sixteen years. But her last twenty-five years Mary Reynolds passed exclusively in her second state.
Schroeder von der Kalk[2] reports on the following case: The patient became ill at the age of sixteen with periodic amnesia, after a previous tedious illness of three years. Sometimes in the morning after waking she passed through a peculiar choreic state, during which she made rhythmical movements with her arms. The whole day she would then exhibit a childish, silly behaviour and had lost all her educated capabilities. (When normal she is very intelligent, well read, speaks French well.) In the second state she begins to speak faulty French. On the second day she
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