An aged man of my acquaintance lay on his deathbed. In his childhood he
had first learned to speak German; but, moving with his family when he
was eight or nine years of age to an English-speaking community, he had
lost his ability to speak German, and had been unable for a third of a
century to carry on a conversation in his mother tongue. Yet during the
last days of his sickness he lost almost wholly the power to use the
English language, and spoke fluently in German. During all these years
his brain paths had retained the power to reproduce the forgotten words,
even though for so long a time the words could not be recalled. James
quotes a still more striking case of an aged woman who was seized with a
fever and, during her delirious ravings, was heard talking in Latin,
Hebrew and Greek. She herself could neither read nor write, and the
priests said she was possessed of a devil. But a physician unraveled the
mystery. When the girl was nine years of age, a pastor, who was a noted
scholar, had taken her into his home as a servant, and she had remained
there until his death. During this time she had daily heard him read
aloud from his books in these languages. Her brain had indelibly
retained the record made upon it, although for years she could not have
recalled a sentence, if, indeed, she had ever been able to do so.
