Rough Ways Made Smooth: A series of familiar essays on scientific subjects

by Richard A. Proctor

A young woman of robust constitution had narrowly escaped drowning. She was insensible for six hours, and continued unwell after being restored to animation. Ten days later she was seized with a fit of complete stupor, which lasted four hours; when she opened her eyes she seemed to recognise no one, and appeared to be utterly deprived of the senses of hearing, taste, and smell, as well as of the power of speech. Sight and touch remained, but though movements were excited and controlled by these senses, they seemed to arouse no ideas in her mind. In fact, her mental faculties seemed entirely suspended. Her vision at short distances was quick, and the least touch startled her; but unless she was touched or an object were placed where she could not help seeing it, she took no notice of what was passing around her. [It does not appear to me certain that at this stage of her illness she saw in the ordinary sense of the word; the sense of touch may alone have been affected, as it certainly is affected to some degree by any object so placed that it could not but be seen by a short-sighted person. But it is clear that later the sense of sight was restored, supposing, which is not perhaps probable, that it was ever lost in the early stage.] She did not even know her own mother, who attended constantly upon her. Wherever she was placed she remained. Her appetite was good, but [like F.] she ate indifferently whatever she was fed with, and took nauseous medicines as readily as agreeable food. Her movements were solely of the automatic kind. Thus, she swallowed food put into her mouth, but made no effort to feed herself. Yet when her mother had conveyed the spoon [in the patient's hand] a few times to her mouth, the patient continued the operation. It was necessary, however, to repeat this lesson every time she was fed, showing the complete absence of memory. 'The very limited nature of her faculties, and the automatic life she was leading, appear further evident from the following particulars. One of her first acts on recovering from the fit had been to busy herself in picking the bedclothes; and as soon as she was able to sit up and be dressed, she continued the habit by incessantly picking some portion of her dress. She seemed to want an occupation for her fingers, and accordingly part of an old straw bonnet was given to her, which she pulled into pieces with great minuteness; she was afterwards bountifully supplied with roses: she picked off the leaves, and then tore them up into the smallest particles imaginable. A few days subsequently, she began forming upon the table, out of those minute particles, rude figures of roses, and other common garden flowers; she had never received any instructions in drawing. Roses not being so plentiful in London, waste paper and a pair of scissors were put into her hand, and for some days she found an occupation in cutting the paper into shreds; after a time these cuttings assumed rude shapes and figures, and more particularly the shapes used in patchwork. At length she was supplied with proper materials for patchwork, and after some initiatory instruction, she took to her needle and to this employment in good earnest. She now laboured incessantly at patchwork from morning till night, and on Sundays and week-days, for she knew no difference of days; nor could she be made to comprehend the difference. She had no remembrance from day to day of what she had been doing on the previous day, and so every morning commenced de novo. Whatever she began, that she continued to work at while daylight lasted; manifesting no uneasiness for anything to eat or drink, taking not the slightest heed of anything which was going on around her, but intent only on her patchwork.' From this time she began to improve, learning like a child to register ideas. She presently learned worsted-work, and showed delight in the harmony of colours and considerable taste in selecting between good and bad patterns. After a while she began to devise patterns of her own. But she still had no memory from day to day of what she had done, and unless the unfinished work of one day was set before her on the next, she would begin something new.

And now, for the first time, ideas derived from her life before her illness seemed to be awakened within her. When pictures of flowers, trees, and animals were shown her, she was pleased; but when she was shown a landscape in which there was a river or a troubled sea, she became violently agitated, and a fit of spasmodic rigidity and insensibility immediately followed. The mere sight of water in motion made her shudder. Again, from an early stage of her illness she had derived pleasure from the proximity of a young man to whom she had been attached. At a time when she did not remember from one hour to another what she was doing, she would anxiously await his evening visit, and be fretful if he failed to pay it. When, during her removal to the country, she lost sight of him, she became unhappy and suffered from frequent fits; on the other hand, when he remained constantly near her, she improved in health, and early associations were gradually awakened.

At length a day came when she uttered her first word in this her second life. She had learned to take heed of objects and persons around her; and on one occasion, seeing her mother excessively agitated, she became excited herself, and suddenly, yet hesitatingly, exclaimed, 'What's the matter?' After this she began to articulate a few words. For a time she called every object and person 'this,' then gave their right names to wild flowers (of which she had been passionately fond when a child), and this 'at a time when she exhibited not the least recollection of the "old familiar friends and places" of her childhood.' The gradual expansion of her intellect was manifested chiefly at this time in signs of emotional excitement, frequently followed by attacks of spasmodic rigidity and insensibility.

It was through the emotions that the patient was restored to the consciousness of her former self. She became aware that her lover was paying attention to another woman, and the emotion of jealousy was so strongly excited, that she had a fit of insensibility which resembled her first attack in duration and severity. But it restored her to herself. 'When the insensibility passed off, she was no longer spell-bound. The veil of oblivion was withdrawn; and, as if awakening from a sleep of twelve months' duration, she found herself surrounded by her grandfather, grandmother, and their familiar friends and acquaintances. She awoke in the possession of her natural faculties and former knowledge; but without the slightest remembrance of anything which had taken place in the year's interval, from the invasion of the first fit to the [then] present time. She spoke, but she heard not; she was still deaf, but being able to read and write as formerly, she was no longer cut off from communication with others. From this time she rapidly improved, but for some time continued deaf. She soon perfectly understood by the motion of her lips what her mother said; they conversed with facility and quickness together, but she did not understand the language of the lips of a stranger. She was completely unaware of the change in her lover's affections which had taken place in her state of second consciousness; and a painful explanation was necessary. This, however, she bore very well; and she has since recovered her previous bodily and mental health.

There is little in this interesting narrative to suggest that the duality of consciousness in this case was in any way dependent on the duality of the brain. During the patient's abnormal condition, the functions of the brain [proper] would seem to have been for a time in complete abeyance, and then to have been gradually restored. One can perceive no reason for supposing that the shock she had sustained would affect one side rather than the other side of the brain, nor why her recovery should restore one side to activity and cause the side which (on the dual brain hypothesis) had been active during her second condition to resume its original activity. The phenomena appear to suggest that in some way the molecular arrangement of the brain matter became modified during her second condition; and that when the original arrangement was restored all recognisable traces of impressions received while the abnormal arrangement lasted were obliterated. As Mr. Slack presents one form of this idea, 'the grey matter of the brain may have its molecules arranged in patterns somewhat analogous to those of steel filings under the influence of a magnet, but in some way the direction of the forces—or vibrations—may be changed in them. The pattern will then be different.' We know certainly that thought and sensation depend on material processes,—chemical reactions between the blood and the muscular tissues. Without the free circulation of blood in the brain, there can be neither clear thought nor ready sensation. With changes in the nature of the circulation come changes in the quality of thought and the nature of sensation, and with them the emotions are changed also. Such changes affect all of us to some degree. It may well be that such cases as we have been dealing with are simply instances of the exaggerated operation of causes with which we are all familiar; and it may also be that in the exaggeration itself of these causes of change lies the explanation of the characteristic peculiarity of cases of dual consciousness,—the circumstances, namely, that either the two states of consciousness are absolutely distinct one from the other, or that in one state only are events remembered which happened in the other, no recollection whatever remaining in this latter state of what happened in the other, or, lastly, that only faint impressions excited by some intense emotion experienced in one state remain in the other state.

It seems possible, also, that some cases of another kind may find their explanation in this direction, as, for instance, cases in which, through some strange sympathy, the brain of one person so responds to the thoughts of another that for the time being the personality of the person thus influenced may be regarded as in effect changed into that of the person producing the influence. Thus, in one singular case cited by Dr. Carpenter, a lady was 'metamorphosed into the worthy clergyman on whose ministry she attended, and with whom she was personally intimate. I shall never forget,' he says, 'the intensity of the lackadaisical tone in which she replied to the matrimonial counsels of the physician to whom he (she) had been led to give a long detail of his (her) hypochondriacal symptoms: "A wife for a dying man, doctor." No intentional simulation could have approached the exactness of the imitation alike in tone, manners, and language, which spontaneously proceeded from the idea with which the fair subject was possessed, that she herself experienced all the discomforts whose detail she had doubtless frequently heard from the real sufferer.' The same lady, at Dr. Carpenter's request, mentally 'ascended in a balloon and proceded to the North Pole in search of Sir John Franklin, whom she found alive, and her description of his appearance and that of his companions was given with an inimitable expression of sorrow and pity.'

It appears to us that very great interest attaches to the researches made by Prof. Barrett into cases of this kind, and that it is in this direction we are to look for the explanation of many mysterious phenomena formerly regarded as supernatural, but probably all admitting (at least all that have been properly authenticated) of being interpreted so soon as the circumstances on which consciousness depends shall have been determined. Thus the following account of experiments made at the village school in Westmeath seem especially suggestive: 'Selecting some of the village children, and placing them in a quiet room, giving each some small object to look at steadily, he found one amongst the number who readily passed into a state of reverie. In that state the subject could be made to believe the most extravagant statements, such as that the table was a mountain, a chair a pony, a mark on the floor, an insuperable obstacle. The girl thus mesmerised passed on the second occasion into a state of deeper sleep or trance, wherein no sensation whatever was experienced, unless accompanied by pressure on the eyebrows of the subject. When the pressure of the fingers was removed, the girl fell back in her chair utterly unconscious of all around, and had lost all control over her voluntary muscles. On reapplying the pressure, though her eyes remained closed, she sat up and answered questions readily, but the manner in which she answered them, her acts and expressions, were capable of wonderful diversity, by merely altering the place on the head where the pressure was applied. So sudden and marked were the changes produced by a movement of the fingers, that the operation seemed very like playing on some musical instrument. On a third occasion the subject, after passing through these, which have been termed the biological and phrenological states, became at length keenly and wonderfully sensitive to the voice and acts of the operator. It was impossible for the latter to call the girl by her name, however faintly and inaudibly to those around, without at once eliciting a prompt response. If the operator tasted, smelt, or touched anything, or experienced any sudden sensation of warmth or cold, a corresponding effect was produced on the subject, though nothing was said, nor could the subject have seen what had occurred to the operator. To be assured of this he bandaged the girl's eyes with great care, and the operator having gone behind the girl to the other end of the room, he watched him and the girl, and repeatedly assured himself of this fact.' Thus far, Professor Barrett's observations, depending in part on what the operator experienced, may be open to just so much doubt as may affect our opinion of the veracity of a person unknown; but in what follows we have his own experience alone to consider. 'Having mesmerised the girl himself, he took a card at random from a pack which was in a drawer in another room. Glancing at the card to see what it was, he placed it within a book, and in that state brought it to the girl. Giving her the closed book, he asked her to tell him what he had put within its leaves. She held the book close to the side of her head, and said, 'I see something inside with red spots on it; and she afterwards said there were five red spots on it. The card was the five of diamonds. The same result occurred with another card; and when an Irish bank-note was substituted for the card, she said, 'Oh, now I see a number of heads—so many that I cannot count them.' He found that she sometimes failed to guess correctly, asserting that the things were dim; and she could give no information of what was within the book unless he had previously known what it was himself. More remarkable still, he asked her to go in imagination to Regent Street, in London, and tell him what shops she had seen. The girl had never been out of her remote village, but she correctly described to him Mr. Ladd's shop, of which he happened to be thinking, and mentioned the large clock that overhangs the entrance to Beak Street. In many other cases he convinced himself that the existence of a distinct idea in his own mind gave rise to an image of the idea (that is, to a corresponding image) on the mind of the subject; not always a clear image, but one that could not fail to be recognised as a more or less distorted reflection of his own thought.' It is important to notice the limit which a scientific observer thus recognised in the range of the subjects' perception. It has been stated that subjects in this condition have been able to describe occurrences not known to any person, which yet have been subsequently verified. Although some narratives of the kind have come from persons not likely to relate what they knew to be untrue, the possibility of error outweighs the probability that such narratives can really be true. There is a form of unconscious cerebration by which untruthful narratives come to be concocted in the mind. For instance, Dr. Carpenter heard a scrupulously conscientious lady asseverate that a table 'rapped' when nobody was within a yard of it; but the story was disproved by the lady herself, who found from her note-book, recording what really took place, that the hands of six persons rested on the table when it rapped. And apart from the unconscious fiction-producing power of the mind, there is always the possibility, nay, often the extreme probability, that the facts of a case may be misunderstood. Persons may be supposed to know nothing about an event who have been conscious of its every detail; nay, a person may himself be unconscious of his having known, and in fact of his really knowing, of a particular event. Dual consciousness in this particular sense is a quite common experience, as, for instance, when a story is told us which we receive at first as new, until gradually the recollection dawns upon us and becomes momentarily clearer and clearer, not only that we have heard it before, but of the circumstances under which we heard it, and even of details which the narrator from whom a few moments before we receive it as a new story has omitted to mention.[22]

The most important of all the questions depending on dual consciousness is one into which I could not properly enter at any length in these pages—the question, namely, of the relation between the condition of the brain and responsibility, whether such responsibility be considered with reference to human laws or to a higher and all-knowing tribunal. But there are some points not wanting in interest which may be here more properly considered.

In the first place it is to be noticed that a person who has passed into a state of abnormal consciousness, or who is in the habit of doing so, can have no knowledge of the fact in his normal condition except from the information of others. The boy at Norwood might be told of what he had said and done while in his less usual condition, but so far as any experience of his own was concerned, he might during all that time have been in a profound sleep. Similarly of all the other cases. So that we have here the singular circumstance to consider, that a person may have to depend on the information of others respecting his own behaviour—not during sleep or mental aberration or ordinary absence of mind—but (in some cases at least) while in possession of all his faculties and unquestionably responsible for his actions. Not only might a person find himself thus held responsible for actions of which he had no knowledge, and perhaps undeservedly blamed or condemned, but he might find himself regarded as untruthful because of his perfectly honest denial of all knowledge of the conduct attributed to him. If such cases were common, again, it would not improbably happen that the simulation of dual consciousness would become a frequent means of attempting to evade responsibility.