Mirror writing in paralysis
The most remarkable instance of mirror writing on record is to be seen in the last manuscript of Leonardo da Vinci, known as the Codex Atlanticus, in the library at Milan. Various speculations have been made as to why backward writing should have been employed here, but the obvious explanation may be deduced from the letter of a monk, Antonio de Beatis, who, after visiting Leonardo in his retirement at Amboise, wrote that the artist would never paint again, as his right arm was paralysed. The manuscript was in all probability, therefore, written with the left hand, and, as frequently happens in such cases of paralysis, the other hypothetical writing centre was brought into action and mirror writing was produced.
Of all the temporary influences tending to modify handwriting none is more remarkable, or affords a better proof of the way in which written characters vary with the condition of the mind than the effect of hypnotic suggestion.
The experiments of Professors Lombroso and Richet have proved that a suggested change of personality is accompanied by an appropriate style in the handwriting of the subject. Thus, a young hysterical girl when hypnotised under the suggestion that she was a child wrote in childish characters.
Still more striking were their experiments upon a young Austrian student, Chiarloni Clementino, who within little more than an hour was made to assume successively the characters of a child, of Napoleon, of Garibaldi, of a clerk, and of an old man of ninety. He was made to write some words on each of his assumed characters, and the writings not only differed to a marked extent from his normal handwriting, but also had characteristics suggestive of the type of individual he was temporarily personating.
The results of some of these experiments, which the present writer had the permission of the late Professor Lombroso to reproduce, are shown in the accompanying figures. The normal writing of the student is represented below, while Fig. A ([p. 82]) shows words written under the suggestion that he was Napoleon, Fig. B, his writing as the old man of ninety, and Fig. C that done as Garibaldi.
