Today in History - March 27: Illness began with headache, then left musician with a 20-second memory

Renowned UK classical musician Clive Wearing contracted a disease that gave him perhaps the most severe form of amnesia ever recorded on March 27, 1985.

Wearing contracted herpesviral encephalitis, a disease that attacked his central nervous system.

His illness began with a headache and progressed to the severe swelling of the brain. Doctors gave him a one-in-five chance of survival.

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The disease wiped out most of his memory, but also left him unable to make new memories.

As a result, Wearing now has the sensation of waking up from a coma every 20 seconds, even though he has been completely conscious.

Asked to keep a diary, Wearing would write repeated entries about being "completely awake for the first time".

"I wake for the first time," he wrote one day at 7.46am.

At 8.07am he wrote: "I am totally, perfectly aware (1st time)."

Then 15 minutes later, he wrote "Now I am really completely awake (1st time)."

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Though he did not remember that he had a diary, he would recognise his own handwriting, feeling confident to cross out previous entries.

But despite forgetting most of his early life, Wearing never lost his profound and deep love of his wife Deborah, whom he had married a year before his illness.

Wearing would forget about his wife the moment she left the room, but when she re-entered, he would greet her with joyful affection.

He would also commonly mistake people in public for the prime minister or the queen. Because in his mind he had never met anybody, he would assume every unfamiliar face was that of a very important person.

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Wearing also never lost his musical ability, even though he does not remember pieces of music until he starts to play them.

He is still alive at 87 years old, though never recovered his memory.

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