“I have never heard of its being done. I once read a novel in which something of the kind was related--'Dr. Heidenhoff's Process'--but even in that novel, the author had not the audacity to pretend that his story was possible; it turned out to be a dream. But then, after all, that was quite a different thing. It was the obliteration not of the whole memory, but simply the memory of one particular fact or group of facts. The memory in respect of other facts remained intact.”
“Ah, that indeed! That, of course, it may not as yet be within the power of science to accomplish. That, as yet, I will grant you, is only the material for a romancer's fancy. I cannot cause you to forget any one fact or train of facts, while leaving your memory unaffected regarding other facts. But the obliteration of the whole memory is a very different matter. It has happened frequently by accident. You have never heard of its being effected by design, though you will acknowledge the theoretical possibility of its being so effected. Well and good. Now the truth is this: not only is it theoretically possible, but it is practically feasible.. It can be done; and I, even I, can do it. That same obliviousness which, as the case-books of physicians bear abundant testimony, Nature often produces through the medium of disease or violence, I--I who speak to you--I can produce by means of a surgical operation.”
“Incredible or not, it is a fact,” said I. “What a stone striking you upon the head may accomplish, I can accomplish with my instruments. I can cause a depression of one of the bones of your skull, at a certain point upon the tissues of the brain, so that, when you recover from the influence of the anaesthetic which I administer, you are returned to the mental and moral condition of infancy. You remember nothing. You know nothing. Your mind is as a blank sheet of paper. The past is abolished. The future is before you.”
“If what you say is true, you possess a terrible power. Are surgeons generally able to do this?”
“Every intelligent surgeon must recognise the antecedent possibility of the operation. But when you ask me whether surgeons generally know how to perform it, I suppose that they do not. It is a discovery which I have made, by the examination of a large number of skulls, and the dissection of a large number of brains. I have never communicated it to anybody else. Others, for all I know, may have made the same discovery independently.”