The Memory Doctor

     In 1887, Mark Twain discovered Professor Loisette, a memory doctor, who made a living peddling a system of memory techniques bearing his name. Inductees into the Loisette System were sworn to secrecy and charged the modern equivalent of five hundred dollars to learn the “natural laws of memory” which the doctor claimed to have discovered.
     Twain enrolled in a several-week-long course and at first was deeply impressed, even going so far as to publish a testimonial in favor of the System. He was soon to regret this; a year later a book was published titled Loisette Exposed. The author, G.S. Fellows, debunked the system. 
     In a lawsuit the contract was rendered null and void because it was obtained under false pretenses as to what the system was. Dr. Loisette invented not only his academic degree but also his name, Alphonse Loisette. He was really Marcus Dwight Larrowe and had no qualifications to speak of. His entire system had been either plagiarized from other sources or oversold as to its effectiveness.
     Eventually, Twain discovered a system that worked for him. As he wrote, “It was now that the idea of pictures occurred to me; then my troubles passed away…The lecture vanished out of my head more than twenty years ago, but I could rewrite it from the pictures – for they remain.” 
     In 1880 he shared his system of mental “hieroglyphics” with his friend William Dean Howells. After Twain’s death, Howells revealed the method which Twain used to memorize his speeches. 
     Appearing in the 1896 Australian Chess Annual under the heading The Materials Of War was a blurb about chess books which could be obtained from the branches of Geo. Robertson and Co. and added, “Furthermore, to such as are subject to a want of mind concentration, it may not be out of place to mention that the Loisette system claims for itself the power of strengthening mind concentrations-no small boon to chess players.” Guess news of the fraud had not yet reached the publisher. 
     Mnemonic is another word for memory tool. Mnemonics are techniques for remembering information that is otherwise quite difficult to recall: a very simple example is the "30 days hath September" rhyme for remembering the number of days in each calendar month. By the way, there's an easier way of remembering how many days are in a month: 

    
     Loisette's book is still available on Amazon and the System is explained thus: It is the will directing the activity of the intellect into some particular channel and keeping it there. It is the opposite of mind-wandering. What is thinking? It consists in finding relations between the objects of thought with an immediate awareness of those relations. 
     What is the Loisette System? Just a work on mnemonics. Is there a technique that will help chess players remember? Chessbase has a series of articles on the subject: 

Memory Techniques: An Introduction 
Memory Techniques: Memory Palace, from Roman times to today 
Memory Techniques: Creating a Memory Palace, Dos and Don'ts 
Memory Techniques: the Peg system (part one) 
Memory Techniques: the Peg system (part two)