Van Swieten cites from the same author the case of a young workman, who, never having dreamed of making verses, during an attack of fever became a poet and inspired. Perfect speaks of a lunatic, who, during his delirium, expressed himself in very harmonious English verse, although previously he had never shown any dis position for poetry. Tasso is said to have worked better during an attack of mania, than in his lucid intervals.* Finally, in other circumstances we observe phenomena of an entirely inverse character. Far from being pheno mena of over-excitement of the memory, they are those of dislocation and clouding over.
Persons thus affected, more or less completely lose the faculty of retaining certain memories ; either through the destruction of certain circumscribed regions in the cortical substance,f or through the progressive destruc tion of its elements.
Similarly there are certain persons with dementia who, being affected with partial amnesia, forget the date of the day and year in which they live ; they do not know their way, lose themselves in the streets, and yet they are still able to sustain a certain amount of current con versation. Others, on rising from table forget they have had their dinner, and order it to be served up. Others, after receiving a visit from their relations or friends, and conversing with them, when the visit is fairly over—an hour afterwards—retain no definite impression about it, or else make mistakes ; when, for instance, they have received a visit from their daughter, they will say they have had one from their grandfather, etc.
There are others again who, although enjoying a cer tain portion of their faculties and the capacity for speaking regularly, lose little by little the memory of proper names, then that of substantives, then of verbs, and make mistakes in orthography. Cuvier, in his
lectures, mentions the case of a man who had lost the memory of substantives, and who could form sentences very well, with the exception of names, which he left blank.* It is curious to remark, as J. Falret has done, that in this process of decay which takes place, the human mind in despoiling itself of its wealth, loses it chrono logically in the order in which it has accumulated it. Thus it is the remembrance of proper names which is first extinguished ; these, as we have previously remarked, p. 16f, representing the first periods of the work of the intelligence in ascending evolution. Then come com mon names, adjectives and verbs, which represent a more advanced degree of the perfectionment of the faculties, when the child has begun to express his will by means of appropriate verbs.
Thus in these periods of progressive decadence the processes of memory being gradually deprived of the materials by means of which they effect their manifes tations, cease to be regularly evolved ; amnesia advances further and further, and we see individuals thus affected quite incapable of registering present impressions, pre serving no remembrance of what passes around them, forgetting the past, and becoming more and more incapable of expressing their sentiments and wishes, in consequence of the progressive wearing out of the organic apparatuses that serve for the evolution of the processes of memory.