A case of double consciousness / by Albert Wilson.

  • Wilson, Albert, 1854-1928.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A case of double consciousness / by Albert Wilson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    ing curious attacks began and occurred several times a day. Whilst reading or dressing a doll she would commence shaking, first in the legs, and then all over. She would rapidly clear away everything around her and say, “ It is coming.” She would then turn a somersault on the bed and sit up on the counterpane, near the foot of the bed. She would call out “ Holloa,” and one recognised a new personality. Her facial expression was altered, being more simple and childlike. She would then address those around by the nicknames she had adopted at the close of her mania. This made me at first think this personality was connected with the mania. But subse- quently I saw her change suddenly from one to the other. Characters.—Her speech was altered. She clipped her words like baby-talk. She said “ sings ” for “ things,” etc. Her memory of all previous events was quite gone. She is so ignorant that she cannot associate names with objects. She knows in one “ fit ” what happened in a previous fit. The “ fit ” or personality would last from ten to fifty minutes, and occur eight or ten times a day. When she returned to normal, she looked dazed and cross, but this would perhaps last only half a minute. In a minute or two after she returned to normal, she would be quite herself and commence doing what she had been engaged in before the interruption, resuming where she left off, as if nothing had happened. At this time she would be normal “ Mary Barnes,” or as I will call it in the “ A ” stage, for half a day or two or three hours at a time. The least excitement, such as the doctor’s visit, sent her off into B 2. About the sixth week, catalepsy occurred. It began first in the feet and legs. She might be quite normal, “A,” working with her doll, when her feet and legs would become fixed. Usually they were in extension ; seldom flexed. But this catalepsy seemed to bear no relationship to the A or B stages. It occurred in either. First a leg, then an arm became rigid. The whole body was fixed, except the muscles of the head and neck. Sometimes she would get fixed up like a ball so that she could be lifted en masse by any one limb; at other times the limbs were set in varying positions. Thus in feeding herself one arm might be fixed holding the cup, or the right hand holding the spoon, or both together. By force sometimes one could make a limb yield, but it at once returned to the original position.