Patient H.M.

Description:

"In the late 1930s, in asylums and hospitals across America, a group of renowned neurosurgeons worked to develop and refine a new class of brain operation--the lobotomy--that they hoped would eradicate everything from schizophrenia to homosexuality...The most important test subject to emerge from this largely untold chapter was a 27-year-old factory worker named Henry Molaison...Journalist Luke Dittrich uses his case as a starting point for a kaleidoscopic journey, from the first recorded brain surgeries in ancient Egypt to the cutting-edge laboratories of MIT...It is also, at times, a deeply personal journey: Dittrich's grandfather was the brilliant, morally complex surgeon who operated on Molaison--and thousands of other patients..."--From dust jacket.

subjects: Patients,  Amnesiacs,  Surgery,  Epilepsy,  Memory disorders,  Biography,  History,  Amnesia,  Brain, surgery,  Memory, Long-Term,  Anterograde Amnesia,  Neurosciences,  nyt:science=2016-09-11,  New York Times bestseller,  New York Times reviewed,  Frontal lobotomy,  Brain,  44.01 history of medicine,  Neurochirurgie,  Hirnforschung,  Memory

People: H. M. (1926-2008),  William Beecher Scoville (1906-1984)

Places: United States