FREAKS OF MEMORY.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1793, 4 July 1913, Page 4

FREAKS OF MEMORY.

An extraordinary case of alternate personality is now puzzling the physicians of Atlanta. It is that of Mrs. Carrie B. Jordan, who, after nineteen years of utter ignorance of herself and her surroundings suddenly awoke to consciousness and resumed lifo just where she had left it off nineteen years ago. She her memory 'in hospital whiel convalescing from an abdominal operation. ■' Mrs. Jordan's first request was that her baby bo brought to her. She remembered this as a two weeks old infant. The "baby" that was brought to her is now Mrs. Pansy Rowe, a«ed nineteen. Everything that had happened in the intervening years, was an absolute blank to Mrs. Jordan. . . This is a case of amnesia in a form that, though not eommon, is well recognised' by physicians, says the "New York World." Such cases as this are strong corroboration of tlio theory that mind is more than matter, that mental processes are something more than the mere mechanical or chemical operation of the cells of the brain. Memory has always been a stumbling block in the wan' of the materialists— those men who deny the existence of an immaterial mind and regard all thought as nothing but a product or' a function of matter. For the cells of the brain, like those of allthe other organs, are incessantly changing, so that a very few years ai'ter an impression has been produced on the mind there is not a single cell of the brain that received it left, all having been swept away and their places taken by new cells. And yet memory of- old experiences persists. Often in old age the memory of the events of childhood becomes singularly acute, things being remembered that had not been thought of in many decades, although the brain cells which received the early impressions have been renewed over and over again. In such a caso as Mrs. Jordan's tho cells of her brain have been renewed twice, if not three times, since she lost consciousness of ]ier personality. And yet on recovering sho" remembered the events of nineteen years ago as if they had been of yesterday. At the same time silo forgot'absolutely all recent events. For such eases as hers there is no explanation possible on tho purely materialistic theory.