Patient H.M.

Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness and Family Secrets
by Luke Dittrich
Published August, 2016

I should probably start by confessing that I love brains. Not like a zombie loves brains. More like an obsessive geek who will talk about neuroscience for hours to anyone. Even if that anyone is clearly not interested in the slightest. I spent eight years at university studying psychology and neuroscience, resulting in surprisingly few qualifications but leaving me with a life-long passion for brains.
So, as a history of one of neuroscience's most famous patients, Patient H.M. was always going to be a pretty easy sell for me.

"Patient H.M." was the pseudonym used for Henry Molaison by the researchers and doctors who spent more than sixty years studying him. Affected by severe epilepsy, Henry underwent surgery in the 1950s to remove part of his brain. Following the operation, Henry was left with a complete, debilitating and global amnesia - he was completely unable to form new memories. Henry became the most-studied patient in the history of neuroscience as researchers used his amnesia to better understand the processes of memory and the brain structures involved.

Henry's case is one that many, many people will be familiar with. It's one of the first things covered in any introductory psychology class, along with a few other memorable characters like Phineas Gage (impaled his head on a massive spike and somehow survived) and Walter Freeman (developed the highly inventive and rather disturbing transorbital lobotomy, performed with an icepick).
In some ways this may be pretty familiar ground for a lot of readers, however this book is much more than just another retelling of an interesting amnesia case.

Post-accident Phineas Gage posing with the rod that used to be inside his brain.

Author Luke Dittrich is the grandson of the brilliant (but arguably misguided) neurosurgeon who operated on Henry and caused his amnesia. As such, Dittrich brings a unique perspective to his story, using the H.M. case as a starting point around which to weave an absolutely fascinating history of neuroscience (from the very first references to brain surgery in Ancient Egypt through the lobotomy-obsessed 1930s to H.M's final days in the early 2000s) and relating this back in a very personal way to events within his own family.
This makes for a very, very readable story - I found this book absolutely impossible to put down and for someone who generally avoids non-fiction, that's saying a lot. It's a fantastic blend of biography, history and science writing, all blending into a captivating and cautionary tale of misguided surgeons ruining lives in their attempts to cure psychological problems with a scalpel (or an icepick).
As Dittrich writes,"Neurosurgery, whatever the era, always requires at least two frightening qualities in its practitioners: the will to make forcible entry into another human's brain, and the hubris to believe you can fix the problems inside"

The aforementioned Dr Freeman, lobotomising some poor lady with an icepick. He is thought to have performed this surgery on more than 3,000 patients. 

Fascinating, disturbing and memorable, this is the best non-fiction book I've read in years.

10/10