An Idiot's Remarkable Memory.

Manawatu Herald, Volume III, 14 March 1891, Page 3

An Idiot's Remarkable Memory.

+ An idiot who, perhaps, surpasses all rivals iu memory aad in the ca pacity to make tuen'al mathematical calculations, was recently examined in St Petersburg. He is 27 years old and in his youth was noted for his brilliant abilities, but was addicted to the immoderate use of liquors and led a disaapa'ed life. He was attacked by an acute disease. When he recovered he was found to have lost all his mental faculties except memory and the power of mathe matical calculation. These increased proportionally as his understanding and powet of logical thinking vnn' iehed. Now he is a living phonograph and calculating apparatus. In the lecture-room, Professor Merjevsky requested him to square numbers containing five or six fiigure^, to extract the square root of like numbers and so on. All the questions wera correctly answered by the parent in a few seconds. No mathematician present could do any thing like it. I Then the professor requested some one to read poetry aloud for several minutes, and the patient repeated it as correctly as a phonograph. The memory and the calculating capacity of the patient are still growing, while in other respects he is l.ecom - ing a more hopeless idiot;