HIS MEMORY AMPUTATED

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 275, 14 November 1908, Page 4

HIS MEMORY AMPUTATED

At the age of twenty.-seven William M. Coyne has survived one of the most notable surgical operations ever performed in a St. Louis hospital, and has been forced literally to begin life anew. For when lie regained consciousness after part o l ' his brain had been removed on the opera ting-table at the City Hospital, following a street-car accident he found that the surgeons had amputated his memory. Mentally lie was a child again, unable to walk, talk, read, or write, and unable to remember his name. His past was absolutely a blank. Every incident preceding the operation had been erased from his memory as a sponge wipes the writing from a slate. Little by little, as a child masters its three R's, this man has relearned his alphabet and his multiplication table. He has learned again how to walk and talk and read and write. He has learned his own identity, lie is out of the ! hospital now, and the physicians tell him that lie will probable recover his memory completely, with possibly one exception—he may never be able to recall the incidents of the afternoon when he was run down by a street-car, picked | up senseless, and pronounced mortally 1 injured.