(This story is fiction and resemblance to anyone living or dead is coincidental)

The toothache was unbearable and after a week of misery, Austin Lloyd’s wife Norah accompanied him to the dentist. One side of his mouth was badly swollen and he was told he needed urgent treatment to remove a badly infected tooth in his upper jaw.

At that time, Austin was thirty-four years old. He was small, thin and had a pallid,

pockmarked complexion owing to adolescent Acne. His hair was fair and quite fine and he had a habit of continually fussing with it. By trade he was a bookbinder in a small market town in the north of England.

The dentist informed him the extraction would be difficult and could take a while and he was asked if he had any objection to being anesthetized by gas. He said not and so the dentist duly went about his work, while Norah sat in the waiting room. After an inordinately long time during which the dentist and his nurse administered more gas whilst they battled to remove a stubborn, long rooted tooth, Austin came spinning back down to consciousness.

He opened his eyes and didn’t seem to realise where he was. Then he gave a half smile and remarked that he’d been ill. The dentist stared at him in alarm. “The man was not speaking in his normal voice!” He gave his patient a drink of water and was rewarded with a distinctly German sounding; “Danke Shon!” Then the patient swung his head around and enquired; “Where’s Constanze?”

The dentist instructed Austin to remain in the chair and asked the nurse to fetch his wife. Norah came in and was met with a look of incomprehension by her husband. He didn’t recognise her and started rambling on in German. Nobody had any idea what was going on and so with no sign of improvement after a further fifteen minutes the dentist got on the phone to the hospital accident and emergency personnel, who sent round an ambulance.

Over the next two weeks as an in-patient, several physicians examined Austin Lloyd and eventually his wife was told he was to be admitted to a psychiatric clinic as her husband was convinced he was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Norah was puzzled and said to her knowledge her husband had never been out of the country. “He hated the Germans because his father had been a prisoner of war in a German concentration camp.