DOUBLE-BARRELLED BRAINS.
ITO THE EDITOR 01' THE "SPECTATOR.")
SIR,—Reading your article on " Double-barrelled Brains," it occurs to me that my own experience may interest your readers. I have all my life been a student and a brain-labourer, and was well aware of the duality of the brain, but never before heard that the left side had any peculiar activity. Nevertheless, I have always known that the left was the working half in my own head. I feel that side of the brain, while the other appears inert or absent,—i.e., I am conscious of the one half, not of the other.
I am very subject to headache, and it comes exclusively on the left side of the brain, sometimes, though rarely, extending all over the forehead, but never confined to the right side, and never implicating the larger part of it. And to carry out your idea still further, my left hand is peculiarly feeble and useless ; I cannot even cut the nails of my right hand. When I am half asleep and struggling to wake, I sometimes seem to myself to be more than one person, and the first step towards waking is the recovery of identity and personal unity.
I have seldom or never met any one who was conscious of the action of the brain as I am, or of its existence, except when in pain or discomfort. Perhaps, therefore, these particulars may interest your readers.—I am, Sir, &c., AB EXTRA.
Previous page
