Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets

Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets

â€œOliver Sacks meets Stephen Kingâ€* 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. For readers of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks comes a story that has much to teach us about our relentless pursuit of knowledge.

Winner of the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award â€¢ Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The Washington Post â€¢ New York Post â€¢ NPR â€¢ The Economist â€¢ New York â€¢ Wired â€¢ Kirkus Reviews â€¢ BookPage

In 1953, a twenty-seven-year-old factory worker named Henry Molaisonâ€”who suffered from severe epilepsyâ€”received a radical new version of the then-common lobotomy, targeting the most mysterious structures in the brain. The operation failed to eliminate Henryâ€™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. Dittrichâ€™s grandfather was the brilliant, morally complex surgeon who operated on Molaisonâ€”and thousands of other patients. The authorâ€™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 grandfatherâ€™s relentless experimentationâ€”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.

â€œAn exciting, artful blend of family and medical history.â€â€”The New York Times

â€œIn prose both elegant and intimate, and often thrilling, Patient H.M. is an important book about the wages not of sin but of science.â€â€”The Washington Post

â€œSpellbinding . . . 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.â€â€”The New York Times Book Review

â€œPatient 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.â€â€”Sheri Fink, M.D., Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Five Days at Memorial

â€œThis is classic reporting and myth-making at the same time.â€â€”Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin

*Kirkus ReviewsÂ (starred review)
Country USA
Brand Random House Books for Young Readers
Manufacturer Random House
Binding Hardcover
ReleaseDate 2016-08-09
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780812992731

Country	USA
Brand	Random House Books for Young Readers
Manufacturer	Random House
Binding	Hardcover
ReleaseDate	2016-08-09
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780812992731