been
repeated more than once. At the age of ten, when occurred the first
attack which I remember, I was at school in my native New England
village. One very cold day I was running home after school, when my foot
slipped on a frozen pool. My head struck the ice, but I felt no great
pain, and was almost at once on my feet. I was bewildered with what I
saw around me. Seemingly I had just risen from my seat at the breakfast
table to find myself in the open air, in solitude, in clothing too
heavy, with hands and feet too large, and with a July world suddenly
changed to midwinter. As it happened, my father was near, and took me
home. When the physicians came, they asked me many questions which I
could not understand.

Next morning my father sat by my bed and questioned mo again. He
inquired about my studies, about my classmates, about my teacher, about
the school games. Many of his questions seemed strange to me, and I
answered them in such words that he soon knew there was an interval of
more than six mouths in my consciousness. He then tried to learn whether
there remained in my mind any effect of my studies during the past
term. The result was surprising. He found that as to actual knowledge my
mind retained the power developed by its exercise,--without, however,
holding all details of fact,--but that, in everything not positive, my
experience seemed to have been utterly lost. I knew my multiplication
table thoroughly; I had acquired it in the interval now forgotten. I
could write correctly, and my ability to read was not lessened. But when
questions concerning historical events, either general or local, were
asked, my answers proved that I had lost everything that I had learned
for the six months past. I showed but little knowledge of new games on
the playground, and utter forgetfulness of the reasons for and against
the Mexican War which was now going on, and in which, on the previous
day, I had felt the eager interest of a healthy boy.

Moreover my brain reproduced the most striking events of my last period
of normal memory with indistinct and inaccurate images, while the time
preceding that period was as nothing to me. My little sister had died
when I was six years old; I did not know that she had ever lived; her
name, even, was strange to me.

After a few days I was allowed to rise from bed, to which, in my own
opinion, there had never been necessity for keeping me. I was not,
however, permitted to go out of doors