It has often occurred to me in
the course of my medical practice, to doubt whether we can justifiably
infer--in cases of delirium--that the loss of the faculty of speaking
connectedly, implies of necessity the loss of the faculty of thinking
connectedly as well. Poor Mr. Candy's illness gave me an opportunity
of putting this doubt to the test. I understand the art of writing
in shorthand; and I was able to take down the patient's 'wanderings',
exactly as they fell from his lips.--Do you see, Mr. Blake, what I am
coming to at last?"
I saw it clearly, and waited with breathless interest to hear more.
"At odds and ends of time," Ezra Jennings went on, "I reproduced my
shorthand notes, in the ordinary form of writing--leaving large spaces
between the broken phrases, and even the single words, as they had
fallen disconnectedly from Mr. Candy's lips. I then treated the result
thus obtained, on something like the principle which one adopts in
putting together a child's 'puzzle.' It is all confusion to begin with;
but it may be all brought into order and shape, if you can only find
the right way. Acting on this plan, I filled in each blank space on the
paper, with what the words or phrases on either side of it suggested
to me as the speaker's meaning; altering over and over again, until my
additions followed naturally on the spoken words which came before them,
and fitted naturally into the spoken words which came after them.
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