nevertheless write them. Mr. J. Hunter was suddenly attacked with a
singular affection of this kind in December 1789, when on a visit at the
house of a friend in town. "He did not know in what part of the house he
was, not even the name of the street when told it, nor where his own house
was: he had not a conception of any thing existing beyond the room he was
in, and yet was perfectly conscious of the loss of memory. He was sensible
of impressions of all kinds from the senses, and therefore looked out of
the window, although rather dark, to see if he could be made sensible of
the situation of the house. The loss of memory gradually went off, and in
less than half an hour his memory was perfectly recovered." This might
possibly be connected with a gouty habit to which Mr. Hunter was subject,
though not at this time labouring under a paroxysm. The late Bishop of
Landaff, Dr. Watson, gives a singular case of partial amnesia in his
father, the result of an apoplectic attack. "I have heard him ask twenty
times a-day," says Dr. Watson, "What is the name of the lad that is at
college?" (my elder brother); and yet he was able to repeat, without a
blunder, hundreds of lines out of classic authors. And hence, there is
no reason for discrediting the story of a German statesman, a Mr. Von B.
related in the seventh volume of the _Psycological Magazine_, who
having called at a gentleman's house, the servants of which did not know
him, was under the necessity of giving in his name; but unfortunately at
that moment he had forgotten it, and excited no small laughter by turning
round to a friend who accompanied him, and saying with great earnestness,
"Pray tell me who I am, for I cannot recollect."

From severe suffering of the head in many fevers a great inroad is
frequently made upon the memory, and it is long before the convalescent
can rightly put together all the ideas of his past life. Such was one of
the effects of the plague at Athens, as we learn from Thucydides; "and
many, on recovery, still experienced such any extraordinary oblivion of