He masterfully depicts how his grandfather’s experiments in psychosurgery pushed ‘deeper into uncharted territories of the human brain’, going from uncotomy and eventually complete medial temporal lobotomy (page 195). The book narrates how Scoville ’embraced brain surgery… with all his heart’, possessing as it was the ‘the two frightening qualities‘ of neurosurgeons, ‘the will to make forcible entry into another human’s brain, and the hubris to believe you can fix the problem‘ (pages 52 and 13). William Scoville had initially trained as a neurologist but his love for neurosurgery led him to study under great surgeons such as James Poppen and Walter Dandy, ‘two of the best neurosurgeons of the day’ (page 51). The author also investigated his own family history, revolving around his colourful grandfather. Anatomography – en:Anatomography ( setting page of this image), CC BY-SA 2.1 jp, Link Every aspect of him was scrutinized, and the contours of his deficits were mapped out with increasing precision, day by day, year by year’ (page 311). Because of the unique amnesia Henry manifested, he became a treasure trove for neuroscientists who endlessly probed him ‘there were very few tests from the researchers’ arsenals that were not applied to Henry at one time or another. The devastating amnesia was such that Henry ‘told the same stories, over and over, but he always told them with equal enthusiasm’, and his inner state was ‘a constant feeling of having just emerged from a dream‘ (pages XII and 25). The book described the ‘brutal and stark’ amnesia that resulted from ‘the holes my grandfather dug in Henry’s brain’, regretting that Henry’s life ‘never progressed beyond the day in 1953‘ when Scoville ‘removed some small but important pieces’ of his brain (pages 44 and XIII). Peter’s school… into the unforgettable amnesic Patient H. The author meticulously pieced together Henry’s life, detailing his intractable epilepsy that was treated with bilateral temporal lobectomy this was the radical surgery that ‘transformed a forgettable boy from St. By lifesciencedb –, CC BY-SA 2.1 jp, Link The book brilliantly relates Henry’s life story, intertwined as it was, with the life of Scoville, demonstrating how his brain ‘ revolutionised brain science’ (page 47).The picture the author paints however is ‘a dark one, full of the sort of emotional and physical pain, and fierce desires, that Patient H. What adds poignancy to the book is that the author is the grandson of William Beecher Scoville, the larger-than-life neurosurgeon whose almost cavalier approach to brain surgery resulted in Henry’s total amnesia. Patient H.M., now known to be Henry Molaison, perhaps more than any other patient, helped to delineate how the brain functions. This is a unique and even controversial biography of a person the author described as ‘the most studied individual in the history of neuroscience’ (page 8).

Patient hm by luke dittrich