Patient H.M.

A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets

By: Luke Dittrich

Narrated by: George Newbern

“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. 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 • Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner

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

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.

“An exciting, artful blend of family and medical history.”—The New York Times

*Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Of two minds about it

This story is fascinating and thoroughly detailed without being boring. I struggled with the morality of it though; considering how much has evolved in medical ethics, it was at times heartbreaking to hear how things used to be or how some doctors felt about their practice.

Overall enjoyable but a bit long winded

I really enjoyed the story overall, but it seemed to go back and forth a lot and veer off on loosely related side tangents. I think some of the extra stuff could have been cut out but overall very interesting story regarding HM as well as the personal family story. I do think the parts about Suzanne had a very negative tone, and could have benefitted from more unbiased story telling.

Fascinating!

A marvelous neurological biography full of medicine, history and human pathos! Amazingly good! I have read a lot in this field and this is truly a great book.

Great story

What a great lesson in the history of neuroscience. enjoyed the narration very much. This was a perfect relationship between story, after and narrator.

We all have suffered to a degree.

Always question wayward physicians, especially after this sobering read. The soul is within us all.