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BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL LONDON SATURDAY MARCH 3 1951 - VISUAL HALLUCINATION OF THE SELF BY JEAN LHERMITTE, M.D.  Honorary Professor, Faculty of Medicine, Paris

Diseases which Can Produce the Phenomenon

Infectious diseases, and especially typhus, seem also apt to produce this strange splitting of personality.

I recently saw a young woman who was taken, the day after her wedding, with acute mental confusion and agitation. This patient thought she could see hands and faces on the wall of the room. When she was quieter she had the feeling that someone was standing behind her chair. She turned round and saw a young woman in the white dress she had worn the previous day, and she realized that this strange visitor was herself.

One of my colleagues was going to hospital one morning.  He was tired and shivery. Suddenly he saw before him a man walking with difficulty. He realized he knew this man. It was himself. When he reached the hospital the vision vanished. (Sivadon.)

This phenomenon of the double can be produced by many other diseases of the brain besides epilepsy. It appears in general paralysis, in encephalitis, in encephalosis of schizophrenia, in focal lesions of the brain, in post-traumatic disorders; but what I want to lay stress upon is the fact that the apparition of the double should make one seriously suspect the incidence of a disease.