Here the stability of personality was unsettled at the age of fourteen by a terrible fright from a viper. Four or five distinct personalities were represented.
(1) In his childhood, previous to his fright by the viper, he had good health and was an ordinary, quiet, obedient, well-behaved boy.
(2) A new personality, of which the primary self had no knowledge, was induced by the fright. This No. 2 personality had frequent epileptic attacks, but was able to work, learning the trade of a tailor.
(3) After one of these attacks of great violence, lasting fifty hours, another personality came to the surface--a greedy, violent, quarrelsome, drunken, thievish vagabond, paralyzed on one side, and with an impediment in his speech. He was an anarchist, an atheist, and a blackguard, always ranting and thrusting his opinions upon those about him, perpetrating bad jokes, and practicing disgusting familiarities with his physicians and attendants. In this state, he knows nothing of the tailor's business, but he is a private of marines.
(4) He is a quiet, sensible man, retiring in behavior and modest in speech. If he is asked his opinions upon politics or religion, he bashfully replies that he would rather leave such things to wiser heads than his. In this condition he is without paralysis and speaks distinctly.
(5) As a man forty years of age he returns to the condition of childhood previous to his fright--a child in intellect and knowledge, having no occupation; he is simply an ordinary, quiet, well-behaved, obedient boy.
Each of these personalities was distinct from all the others; the earlier ones had no knowledge of those which came after them; the later ones had a knowledge of the earlier ones, but only as they might have knowledge of any other person.
A fourth typical case is that of Alma Z., recently reported by me for _The Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases_. In this case, an unusually healthy, strongly intellectual girl, an expert in athletic sport and a leader wherever she might be, on account of overwork, and finally, of broken-down health, developed a second, and, later, a third personality. Each was widely different from the others, all were normal so far as a perfect knowledge of and adaptation to their surroundings were concerned, and all were of unusual intellectual force and brightness, as well as moral worth; but each was distinct, peculiar, and even in marked contrast to the others in many important characteristics. No. 1 had no knowledge of No. 2 nor of No. 3, except from circumstances and the report of others, and also from letters which passed between them giving information to No. 1 regarding changes which had occurred in her absence, as, for instance, of expected company or other engagement which it would be important for her to know.