[Sidenote:  Remembering the Unperceived]

The case was investigated by a physician, who learned that the girl had been a waif and had been taken in charge by a Protestant clergyman when she was nine years old and brought up as his servant.  This clergyman had for years been in the habit of walking up and down a passage of his house into which the kitchen door opened and at the same time reading to himself in a loud voice from his favorite book.  A considerable number of these books were still in the possession of his niece, who told the physician that her uncle had been a very learned man and an accomplished student of Hebrew.  Among the books were found a collection of Rabbinical writings, together with several of the Greek and Latin fathers; and the physician succeeded in identifying so many passages in these books with those taken down at the bed-side of the young woman that there could be no doubt as to the true origin of her learned ravings.

Now, the striking feature of all this, it will be observed, is the fact that the subject was an illiterate servant-girl to whom the Greek, Latin and Hebrew quotations were utterly unintelligible, that normally she had no recollection of them, that she had no idea of their meaning, and finally that they had been impressed upon her mind without her knowledge while she was engaged in her duties in her master’s kitchen.

Several cases are reported by Dr. Abercrombie, and quoted by Professor Hyslop, in which mental impressions long since forgotten beyond the power of voluntary recall have been revived by the shock of accident or disease.  “A man,” he says, “mentioned by Mr. Abernethy, had been born in France, but had spent the greater part of his life in England, and, for many years, had entirely lost the habit of speaking French.  But when under the care of Mr. Abernethy, on account of the effects of an injury to the head, he always spoke French.”

[Sidenote:  Speaking a Forgotten Tongue]

“A similar case occurred in St. Thomas Hospital, of a man who was in a state of stupor in consequence of an injury to the head.  On his partial recovery he spoke a language which nobody in the hospital understood but which was soon ascertained to be Welsh.  It was then discovered that he had been thirty years absent from Wales, and, before the accident, had entirely forgotten his native language.

“A lady mentioned by Dr. Pritchard, when in a state of delirium, spoke a language which nobody about her understood, but which was afterward discovered to be Welsh.  None of her friends could form any conception of the manner in which she had become acquainted with that language; but, after much inquiry, it was discovered that in her childhood she had a nurse, a native of a district on the coast of Brittany, the dialect of which is closely analogous to Welsh.  The lady at that time learned a good deal of this dialect but had entirely forgotten it for many years before this attack of fever.”