June 23

I've given up using the typewriter completely. My co- ordination is bad. I feel that I'm moving slower and slower. Had a terrible shock today. I picked up a copy of an article I used in my research, Krueger's Uber Psychische Ganzheit, to see if it would help me understand what I had done. First I thought there was something wrong with my eyes. Then I realized I could no longer read German. I tested myself in other languages. All gone.

June 22

I'm forgetting things that I learned recently. It seems to be following the classic pattern--the last things learned are the first things forgotten. Or is that the pattern? I'd better look it up again....
I reread my paper on the Algemon-Gordon Effect and I get the strange feeling that it was written by someone else. There are parts I don't even understand.
Motor activity impaired. I keep tripping over things, and it becomes increasingly difficult to type.

June 21

Why can't I remember? I've got to fight. I lie in bed for days and I don't know who or where I am. Then it all comes back to me in a flash. Fugues of amnesia. Symptoms of senility--second childhood. I can watch them coming on. It's so cruelly logical. I learned so much and so fast. Now my mind is deteriorating rapidly. I won't let it happen. I'll fight it. I can't help thinking of the boy in the restaurant, the blank expression, the silly smile, the people laughing at him. No--please--not that again. . .

June 19

Sometimes, at night, I go out for a walk. Last night I couldn't remember where I lived. A policeman took me home. I have the strange feeling that this has all happened to me before--a long time ago. I keep telling myself I'm the only person in the world who can describe what's happening to me.

June 15

Dr. Strauss came to see me again. I wouldn't open the door and I told him to go away. I want to be left to myself. I have become touchy and irritable. I feel the darkness closing in. It's hard to throw off thoughts of suicide. I keep telling myself how important this introspective journal will be.
It's a strange sensation to pick up a book that you've read and enjoyed just a few months ago and discover that you don't remember it. I remembered how great I thought John Milton was, but when I picked up Paradise Lost I couldn't understand it at all. I got so angry I threw the book across the room.
I've got to try to hold on to some of it. Some of the things I've learned. Oh, God, please don't take it all away.

June 10

Deterioration progressing. I have become absentminded.
Algernon died two days ago. Dissection shows my predictions were right. His brain had decreased in weight and there was a general smoothing out of cerebral convolutions as well as a deepening and broadening of brain fissures.
I guess the same thing is or will soon be happening to me. Now that it's definite, I don't want it to happen.
I put Algernon's body in a cheese box and buried him in the back yard. I cried.

June 5

I must not become emotional. The facts and the results of my experiments are clear, and the more sensational aspects of my own rapid climb cannot obscure the fact that the tripling of intelligence by the surgical technique developed by Drs. Strauss and Nemur must be viewed as having little or no practical applica- bility (at the present time) to the increase of human intelligence.
As I review the records and data on Algernon, I see that although he is still in his physical infancy, he has regressed mentally. Motor activity is impaired; there is a general reduction of glandular activity; there is an accelerated loss of co-ordination. There are also strong indications of progressive amnesia.
As will be seen by my report, these and other physical and mental deterioration syndromes can be predicted with statistically significant results by the application of my formula.
The surgical stimulus to which we were both subjected has resulted in an intensification and acceleration of all mental pro- cesses. The unforeseen development, which I have taken the liberty of calling the Algernon-Gordon Effect, is the logical extension of the entire intelligence speed-up. The hypothesis here proven may be described simply in the following terms: Artificially increased intelligence deteriorates at a rate of time directly proportional to the quantity of the increase.
I feel that this, in itself, is an important discovery.
As long as I am able to write, I will continue to record my thoughts in these progress reports. It is one of my few pleasures. However, by all indications, my own mental deterioration will be very rapid.
I have already begun to notice signs of emotional instability and forgetfulness, the first symptoms of the burnout.