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“Oliver Sacks meets Stephen King”* in this propulsive, haunting journey into the life of the most studied human research subject of all time, the amnesic known as Patient H.M., a man who forever altered our understanding of how memory works—and whose treatment raises deeply unsettling questions about the human cost of scientific progress. For readers of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks comes a story that has much to teach us about our relentless pursuit of knowledge.
*Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST
In 1953, a twenty-seven-year-old factory worker named Henry Molaison—who suffered from severe epilepsy—received a radical new version of the then-common lobotomy, targeting the most mysterious structures in the brain. The operation failed to eliminate Henry’s seizures, but it did have an unintended effect: Henry was left profoundly amnesic, unable to create long-term memories. Over the next sixty years, Patient H.M., as Henry was known, became the most studied individual in the history of neuroscience, a human guinea pig who would teach us much of what we know about memory today.
Patient H.M. is, at times, a deeply personal journey. Dittrich’s grandfather was the brilliant, morally complex surgeon who operated on Molaison—and thousands of other patients. The author’s investigation into the dark roots of modern memory science ultimately forces him to confront unsettling secrets in his own family history, and to reveal the tragedy that fueled his grandfather’s relentless experimentation—experimentation that would revolutionize our understanding of ourselves.
Dittrich uses the case of Patient H.M. as a starting point for a kaleidoscopic journey, one that moves from the first recorded brain surgeries in ancient Egypt to the cutting-edge laboratories of MIT. He takes readers inside the old asylums and operating theaters where psychosurgeons, as they called themselves, conducted their human experiments, and behind the scenes of a bitter custody battle over the ownership of the most important brain in the world.
Patient H.M. combines the best of biography, memoir, and science journalism to create a haunting, endlessly fascinating story, one that reveals the wondrous and devastating things that can happen when hubris, ambition, and human imperfection collide.
Praise for Patient H.M.
“An exciting, artful blend of family and medical history.”—The New York Times
“In prose both elegant and intimate, and often thrilling, Patient H.M. is an important book about the wages not of sin but of science.”—The Washington Post
“Spellbinding . . . The fact that Dittrich looks critically at the actual process of scientific investigation is just one of the things to admire about Patient H.M.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Patient H.M. tells one of the most fascinating and disturbing stories in the annals of medicine, weaving in ethics, philosophy, a personal saga, the history of neurosurgery, the mysteries of human memory, and an exploration of human ego.”—Sheri Fink, M.D., Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Five Days at Memorial
“Dittrich explores the limits of science and the mind. In the process, he rescues an iconic life from oblivion. Dittrich is well aware that while we are the sum of what we may remember, we’re also at the mercy of what we can forget. This is classic reporting and myth-making at the same time.”—Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin
- Sales Rank: #12527 in Books
- Published on: 2016-08-09
- Released on: 2016-08-09
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.60" h x 1.38" w x 6.40" l, 1.24 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 464 pages
Review
“An exciting, artful blend of family and medical history.”—The New York Times
“In prose both elegant and intimate, and often thrilling, Patient H.M. is an important book about the wages not of sin but of science. It is deeply reported and surprisingly emotional, at times poignant, at others shocking. . . . A scintillating book, infused with humanity.”—The Washington Post
“Spellbinding . . . The fact that Dittrich looks critically at the actual process of scientific investigation is just one of the things to admire about Patient H.M.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Astonishingly insightful . . . A fascinating story in its own right to anyone interested in the history of modern science’s attempts to understand the causes of mental illness along with the many botched attempts to treat it . . . [Patient H.M.] is indeed about memory, madness, and family secrets and, in that sense, about the paths that shape the core of the self, in each and every one of us.”—Psychology Today
“Beautifully told . . . a book that will rank with Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks in the realm of outstanding medical ethics narratives.”—Associated Press
“Dittrich’s account raises entirely new questions about the way in which the research on H.M. was conducted—and about the conclusions that have long been incorporated into our understanding of memory.”—New York Magazine
“Remarkable.”—Wired
“Oliver Sacks meets Stephen King in a piercing study of one of psychiatric medicine’s darker hours. . . . A mesmerizing, maddening story and a model of journalistic investigation.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“At the heart of this breathtaking work . . . is [Luke] Dittrich’s story of his complicated grandfather, his mentally ill grandmother, and a long-held family secret, with Molaison stranded ‘where the past and the future were nothing but indistinct blurs.’”—Publisher’s Weekly, starred review
“The machinations of scientists and researchers—their personality and ambition, power and hubris—are of equally vital (and cautionary) importance in Dittrich’s unusual and compelling mix of science and family history.”—Booklist, starred review
“Patient H.M. tells one of the most fascinating and disturbing stories in the annals of medicine, weaving in ethics, philosophy, a personal saga, the history of neurosurgery, the mysteries of human memory, and an exploration of human ego. A monumental contribution to our understanding of medical research, and of ourselves, Patient H.M. is sweeping, meticulous, and seamless—with an ending that, like the best of scientific investigations, challenges everything that came before it.”—Sheri Fink, M.D., Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Five Days at Memorial
“In Patient H.M., Luke Dittrich explores the limits of science and the mind. In the process, he rescues an iconic life from oblivion. Dittrich is well aware that while we are the sum of what we may remember, we’re also at the mercy of what we can forget. This is classic reporting and myth-making at the same time.”—Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin
“Luke Dittrich has achieved something remarkable in Patient H.M. This book succeeds on every level: as a fresh look at the most famous patient in medical history, as an exposé of our dark history of psychiatry and neurosurgery, and, most powerfully, as a deeply personal investigation into the author’s past. And yet it’s still a page-turner that reads like a thriller. It deserves a spot next to the great medical histories The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, The Ghost Map, and The Emperor of All Maladies.”—Susannah Cahalan, author of Brain on Fire
“It felt as if I read this book in one breath. Patient H.M. is a fascinating, powerful investigation, a matryoshka doll of nested stories about the past and present, remembering and forgetting. Luke Dittrich’s quest to understand the amnesic patient who taught the world so much about memory leads him to the shoals of his own family tragedy and an ending that will break your heart. But it’s his beautiful unfolding of the story, the art of his sentences and reportage, that you’ll never forget.”—Michael Paterniti, author of The Telling Room
About the Author
Luke Dittrich is a National Magazine Award–winning journalist, and a contributing editor at Esquire. This is his first book.
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Well written and very interesting if you have an interest ...
By Joan the mermaid
Well written and very interesting if you have an interest in medicine. The book drags a bit in the middle.
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
Great book written in anger
By Constant Reader
After an okay career in adventure journalism for popular magazines, Luke Dittrich has produced his first book, the story he was born to write. Dittrich comes from an aristocratic American family that had some dark secrets. His grandfather Scoville was an evangelistic exponent and practitioner of prefrontal lobotomies during the 1950s; his grandmother was a remarkably independent woman before she married her dashing, philandering husband. The quiet "Bam Bam," as Luke and his siblings called her, had a breakdown early in her marriage to Scoville; after various forms of shock treatment she was lobotomized, perhaps by Scoville himself.
Scoville's biggest case, Dittrich learned, was a lobotomy on the epileptic Henry Moulaison. His drill went too far, and Moulaison, known in brain literature as Patient H.M., lost all his present-tense memory. He was studied by many people, especially by Suzanne Corkle, who coincidentally lived across the street from Dittrich's family when they were children.
Yes, Dittrich had a story to tell, but Corkle would not share her notes on Patient H.M. with him; she was writing her own book. Anger, anger, anger. It drives Dittrich's story. This book is a great read.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Great book!
By Deborah Greenstein
What an incredible story. I first downloaded this as a sample on my Kindle but ended up buying it. The story pulls you right in. An easy to read, intriguing, insightful true story!
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