![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() 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). ![]()
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