KNOCKED HIS WITS OUT

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 24, 1881

KNOCKED HIS WITS OUT.

FRENCH papers report an incident which caused a most curious and interesting case of mental derangement. Victor X ——, a Parisian painter, was visiting one of his friends in Sceaux. Stepping out on the balcony of the second story of his friend's house, he bent so far over the balustrade that he lost his equilibrium and fell. The friends of the painter came running up, convinced that he had broken his neck, but he picked himself up and was externally uninjured. But it soon appeared that his brain had been affected, for on attempting to address his friends he could not think of their names. With terror he also found that he had forgotten the names of his wife and daughters. He still could remember single letters of their names, but could not recollect the entire word. The unfortunate man was put under medical treatment, but up to the present no amelioration of his condition has been affected.

Similar cases have repeatedly been observed. Dr. Solger, the well-known writer and linguist, who at the time of his death was Secretary of the Treasury, had the misfortune of falling from his horse while riding in the vicinity of Washington, and striking on a stone with his head, thereby sustaining a fracture of the skull. Now the curious phenomenon happened that Solger, who had married a French lady, and had always spoken only French and English with his wife and family, suddenly could speak no other language but German, his native tongue. Up to the time of his death, which happened soon after his fall, Dr. Solger could converse with his family only by means of an interpreter.

A workman was brought to a London hospital who had lived the greater part of his life in England, but came originally from Belgium. The man had received a blow on the head, and after the injury to his brain he could not speak a word of English, but conversed in Flemish, a language which he had not practiced since early childhood, and which he had almost entirely forgotten.