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

Luke Dittrich

eBook - 2016

“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 WinnerNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYThe 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, targetin...g the most mysterious structures in the brain. The operation failed to eliminate Henry’s seizures, but it did have an unintended... more