Apparitions; Dreams; Occultism -- Early works to 1900; Parapsychology -- Early works to 1900
A gentleman, as we read in Dr. Pritchard’s work, was confined, after a
severe accident, for several weeks, and the accident was not once during
this period remembered by him; but, on his convalescence, he rode again
over the same ground, and all the circumstances instantly flashed across
his mind.
In their youth, Dr. Rush escorted a lady, on a holiday, to see an
eagle’s nest. _Many years_ afterwards, he was called to attend her in
the acute stage of typhus; and, on his entrance into her chamber, she
instantly screamed out, “Eagle’s nest!” and it is said, from this
moment, the fever began to decline.
We ourselves have witnessed these flashes of memory more than once,
during the acuteness of brain fever, where journeys, and stories, and
studies, have been renewed after they had been long forgotten.
There are many romantic incidents in illustration which have been
beautifully wrought into a poem, or drama, as that play of Kotzebue,
written to illustrate the happy success of the Abbé de l’Epée in France,
in imparting knowledge and receiving sentiments from the deaf and dumb.
In this, the young Count Solar, by gestures, unfolds, step by step, his
birth-place, and at length screams with joy, as he stands before the
palace of his ancestors.
Then there is the story of little Montague, who was decoyed by the
chimney sweep. Some time after this, the child was engaged to clean the
chimney of a mansion, and, descending into a chamber, which had been
indeed his own nursery, lay down, in his sooty clothes, on the quilt,
and, by this happy memory, discovered his aristocratic birth. This is
the incident which still enlivens the pageantry of May-day.
These reminiscences will occur sometimes in the most sudden and
unexpected manner. In one of the American journals, we are told of a
clergyman, who, at the termination of some depressing malady, had
completely lost his memory. His mind was a blank, and he had, in fact,
to begin the world of literature again. Among other of his studies was
the Latin language. During his classical readings with his brother, he
one day suddenly struck his head with his hand, and stated that he had a
most _peculiar feeling_, and was convinced that he had _learned all this
before_.
Boërhave, in his “Prelectiones Academic. Institut. Med.,” relates the
case of a Spanish tragic writer, whose memory, subsequently to an acute
febrile disease, was so completely impaired, that not only the
literature of various languages he had studied was lost to him, but also
their elements, the alphabets. When even his own poetic compositions
were read to him, he denied himself to be the author. But the most
interesting feature of the case is this: that, on becoming _again_ a
votary of the Muse, his recent compositions so intimately resembled his
original productions in style and sentiment, that he no longer doubted
that both were the offspring of his own imagination.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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