d in children this symptom is most frequent.
Pritchard, Rush, and other writers upon mental disorders record
interesting instances of remarkable memory-increase before death,
mainly in adults, and during fever and insanity. In simple mania the
memory is often very acute. Romberg tells of a young girl who lost her
sight after an attack of small-pox, but acquired an extraordinary
memory. He calls attention to the fact that the scrofulous and rachitic
diatheses in childhood are sometimes accompanied by this disorder.
Winslow notes that in the incipient state of the brain disease of early
life connected with fevers, disturbed conditions of the cerebral
circulation and vessels, and in affections of advanced life, there is
often witnessed a remarkable exaltation of the memory, which may herald
death by apoplexy.

"Not only has the institution of intelligence in idiots dated from
falls upon the head, but extra mentality has been conferred by such an
event Pritchard tells of three idiot brothers, one of whom, after a
severe head injury, brightened up and became a barrister, while his
brothers remained idiotic. 'Father Mabillon,' says Winslow, 'is said to
have been an idiot until twenty-six years of age, when he fractured his
skull against a stone staircase. He was trepanned. After recovering,
his intellect fully developed itself in a mind endowed with a lively
imagination, an amazing memory, and a zeal for study rarely equaled.'
Such instances can be accounted for by the brain having previously been
poorly nourished by a defective blood supply, which defect was remedied
by the increased circulation afforded by the head-injury.

"It is a commonly known fact that activity of the brain is attended
with a greater head-circulation than when the mind is dull, within
certain limits. Anomalous development of the brain through
blood-vessels, affording an extra nutritive supply to the mental
apparatus, can readily be conceived as occurring before birth, just as
aberrant nutrition elsewhere produces giants from parents of ordinary
size.

"There is but one sense-defect in the child Oscar, his
eyesight-absence, and that is atoned for by his hearing and
touch-acuteness, as it generally is in the blind. Spitzka and others
demonstrate that in such cases other parts of the brain enlarge to
compensate for the atrophic portion which is connected with the
functionless nerves. This, considered with his apparently perfect,
mental and physical h