Freaks of Memory by Editor

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 5, 1861

Freaks of Memory.

By Editor

A British captain, whilst giving orders on the quarter deck of his ship at the battle of the Nile, was struck on the head by a shot and immediately became senseless. He was taken home, and removed to Greenwich Hospital, where for fifteen months he evinced no sign of intilligence. He was then trepanned, and immediately upon the operation being performed, consciousness returned, and he immediately began busying himself to see the orders carried out that he had given during the battle, fifteen months previously. The clock-work of the brain, unaware that it had stopped, upon being set going again pointed to the exact minute on which it had left off.—Once a week.

Will the advocates of the conscious state of the dead, and the immortality of the soul, tell us where that soul was and what it is about during the fifteen months of this man’s insensibility. If a blow upon the head can knock it into unconsciousness, it looks to us far from certain, that death should effect its liberation into a higher sphere of intelligence and life.—Ed.