233 A. We now come to spontaneous cases of multiplex personality,1 of which Louis Vivé's is one of the best known. Louis Vive" exhibited an extraordinary number and variety of phases of personality, partly spontaneous and partly the result of different experiments in "metallotherapy" tried by the physicians in charge of him. These experiments produced curious variations in the hysterical paralyses from which he suffered, and produced at the same time reversions to different past periods of his life - probably associated with the particular forms of paralysis. It appeared that not only were certain past and forgotten mental states recalled by the physical impression of these variations, but also if a past and forgotten mental state were suggested to the patient as his actual present condition, he accepted the belief, and with it came back his past physical condition. It is important to note that the first experiments with metals were made when the experimenters had no knowledge of what had been the actual history of the past paralyses of their patient.

They recovered this from him bit by bit, and after carefully comparing his recollections with contemporary records, concluded that on the whole his various phases really represented himself at various periods of his life.

1 Besides the cases of multiplex personality given in this chapter, see reference to a remarkable recent case (recorded by Dr. Bramwell) in a footnote to section 523.

Louis Vive began life (in 1863) as the neglected child of a turbulent mother. He was sent to a reformatory at ten years old, and there showed himself, as he has always done when his organisation has given him a chance, quiet, well-behaved, and obedient. Then at fourteen years old he had a great fright from a viper - a fright which threw him off his balance and started the series of psychical oscillations on which he has been tossed ever since. At first the symptoms were only physical, epilepsy and hysterical paralysis of the legs; and at the asylum of Bonneval, whither he was next sent, he worked at tailoring steadily for a couple of months. Then suddenly he had a hystero-epileptic attack - fifty hours of convulsions and ecstasy - and when he awoke from it he was no longer paralysed, no longer acquainted with tailoring, and no longer virtuous. His memory was set back, so to say, to the moment of the viper's appearance, and he could remember nothing since. His character had become violent, greedy, and quarrelsome, and his tastes were radically changed. For instance, though he had before the attack been a total abstainer, he now not only drank his own wine but stole the wine of the other patients.

He escaped from Bonneval, and after a few turbulent years, tracked by his occasional relapses into hospital or madhouse, he turned up once more at the Rochefort asylum in the character of a private of marines, convicted of theft, but considered to be of unsound mind. And at Roche-fort and La Rochelle, by great good fortune, he fell into the hands of three physicians - Professors Bourru and Burot, and Dr. Mabille - able and willing to continue and extend the observations which Dr. Camuset at Bonneval and Dr. Jules Voisin at Bicêtre had already made on this most precious of mauvais sujets at earlier points in his chequered career.1

In 1887 he was no longer at Rochefort, and Dr. Burot informed me that his health had much improved, and that his peculiarities had in great part disappeared. I must, however, for clearness' sake, use the present tense in briefly describing his condition at the time when the long series of experiments were made.

The state into which he has gravitated is a very unpleasing one.

1 For Dr. Camuset's account see Annales Médico-Psychologiques, 1882, p. 75; for Dr. Voisin's Archives de Neurologie, September, 1885. The observations at Rochefort have been carefully recorded by Dr. Berjon, La Grande Hystiru chez l'Homme, Paris, 1886, and by Drs. Bourru and Burot in a treatise, De la suggestion mentale, etc. (Bibl. scientifique contemporaine), Paris, 1887.

There is paralysis and insenibility of the right side, and (as is often the case in right hemiplegia) the speech is indistinct and difficult. Nevertheless, he is constantly haranguing any one who will listen to him, abusing his physicians, or preaching, with a monkey-like impudence rather than with reasoned clearness, radicalism in politics and atheism in religion. He makes bad jokes, and if any one pleases him he endeavours to caress him. He remembers recent events during his residence at Rochefort asylum, but only two scraps of his life before that date, namely, his vicious period at Bonneval and a part of his stay at Bicêtre.

Except this strangely fragmentary memory there is nothing very unusual in this condition, and in many asylums no experiments on it would have been attempted. But the physicians of Rochefort had faith in the efficacy of the contact of metals in provoking transfer of hysterical hemiplegia from one side to the other. They tried various metals in turn on Louis Vivé Lead, silver, and zinc had no effect. Copper produced a slight return of sensibility in the paralysed arm. But steel, applied to the right arm, transferred the whole insensibility to the left side of the body.

Such phenomena are now, of course, generally attributed to suggestion. They are at least sufficiently common (as some French physicians hold) in hysterical cases to excite little surprise. What puzzled the doctors was the change of character which accompanied the change of sensibility. When Louis Vive' issued from the crisis of transfer, with its minute of anxious expression and panting breath, he was what might fairly be called a new man. The restless insolence, the savage impulsiveness, have wholly disappeared. The patient is now gentle, respectful, and modest. He can speak clearly now, but he only speaks when he is spoken to. If he is asked his views on religion and politics, he prefers to leave such matters to wiser heads than his own. It might seem that morally and intellectually the patient's cure had been complete.

But now ask him what he thinks of Rochefort; how he liked his regiment of marines. He will blankly answer that he knows nothing of Rochefort, and was never a soldier in his life. "Where are you, then, and what is the date of to-day? " "I am at Bicêtre; it is January 2nd, 1884; and I hope to see M. Voisin to-day, as I did yesterday".

It is found, in fact, that he has now the memory of two short periods of life (different from those which he remembers when his right side is paralysed), periods during which, so far as can now be ascertained, his character was of the same decorous type and his paralysis was on the left side.

These two conditions are what are now termed his first and his second, out of a series of six or more through which he can be made to pass. For brevity's sake I will further describe his fifth state only.

If he is placed in an electric bath, or if a magnet be placed on his head, it looks at first sight as though a complete physical cure had been effected. All paralysis, all defect of sensibility, has disappeared. His movements are light and active, his expression gentle and timid. But ask him where he is, and you find that he has gone back to a boy of fourteen, that he is at St. Urbain, his first reformatory, and that his memory embraces his years of childhood, and stops short on the very day when he had the fright with the viper. If he is pressed to recollect the incident of the viper a violent epileptiform crisis puts a sudden end to this phase of his personality.

This complicated history may be rendered clearer by reference to the tabular statement of it - reproduced below - which was drawn up by my brother, the late A. T. Myers, M. D., F. R. C. P., for his account of the case in The Journal of Mental Science, January 1886, and approved by Drs. Bourru and Burot. The six states of the patient are represented by six vertical columns, and the memories attaching to them by thick black lines on their left-hand borders (see pp. 342-3).