People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 February 1896 — Total Loss of Memory. [ARTICLE]

Total Loss of Memory.

A very curious instance of those sudden and total losses of memory which raise such perplexing and appalling problems as to the nature of personality of man is reported this week from Brighton. While sitting on the seafront a woman felt something break in her head. She thereupon became unable to tell her name, address or anything connected with her past life. She is at present in the Brighton workhouse, her continual cry being: “Oh, shall I get*my memory again?” Her clothing does not contain a single mark or initial whereby she might be identified. She is a respectably dressed woman, apparently fairly well, to do. The following is her description: Age about 56, dressed neatly in black, appears to be a nurse or companion, well educated, wears a wedding ring. We hold, and it seems to us are bound to hold, that the notion of a life beyond the grave, which will not be endowed with memory of this life is tantamount to annihilation. But, if the state of this poor woman is permanent, then she has already suffered a sort of annihilation: though, of course, death may revive/ her lost faculty. Still, if she goes on living, she will in effect be another person, and how are these two personalities to be linked and reconciled? In truth, the whole thing is one of the most soul-shaking of mysteries.—The Spectator.