Jasper County Democrat, Volume 3, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 April 1900 — MIRROR WRITING ODD MALADY [ARTICLE]

MIRROR WRITING ODD MALADY

Its Victims Have Faculty of Inscribing Characters Backward. An almost unique case of nervous disease was Investigated at the last sitting of the French Academy of Medicine. The patient is a young Roumanian, •whose malady has been observed by Dr. Marfnesco of Bucharest. The most curious manifestation of his disease takes the shape of what is known among scientists as “mirror writing,” which means that the characters are written backward, so that when reflected in a mirror they are to be read in the ordinary way. Dr. Marluesco had observed that the hands of his patient when unoccupied were affected with a nervous trembling, which ceased to a great extent when they were used for a definite purpose. Wishing to see what effect this symptom of the malady had on the handwriting Dr. Mariuesco asked the patient to write a few lines from dictation. To his astonishment he found that the entire passage had been written backward with absolute accuracy. The experiment was repeated several times with exactly the same result, and it Is, in fact, impossible for the patient to write otherwise. When asked to trace a word with his foot on the ground It, too, was found to be written backward. The patient being a Jew, a final experiment was made with Hebrew. This language, as is well known, is always written backwards, but the patient, reversing, as usual, the normal process, can only write It from left to rigid. Partial cases of mirror writing hare been observed before, but none In which the tendency was so Irresistible. - Pall Mall Gazette.