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

Based on the Book by Luke Dittrich

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• Publisher: Worth Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781504046466
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Medical Theory, Practice & Reference

So much to read, so little time? This brief overview of Patient H.M. tells you what you need to know—before or after you read Luke Dittrich's book. Crafted and edited with care, Worth Books set the standard for quality and give you the tools you need to be a well-informed reader. This short summary and analysis of Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets includes:

• Historical context
• Chapter-by-chapter overviews
• Profiles of the main characters
• Detailed timeline of key events
• Important quotes
• Fascinating trivia
• Glossary of terms
• Supporting material to enhance your understanding of the original work

About Patient H.M. by Luke Dittrich: Patient H.M. tells the extraordinary true story of Henry Molaison, a young man who underwent a lobotomy in 1953 in hopes of curing his epilepsy. Instead, he suffered extensive memory loss and would became the most studied patient in the history of neuroscience. Luke Dittrich, whose grandfather performed the surgery, artfully combines family history, medical science, and investigative journalism to create a suspenseful and unsettling narrative on the search to understand the most elusive of scientific research topics: the human memory. The summary and analysis in this ebook are intended to complement your reading experience and bring you closer to a great work of nonfiction.

Summary

Prologue

Luke Dittrich introduces the characters who will play a central role in the book: his grandfather, the neurosurgeon Dr. William Beecher Scoville; Henry Molaison, later to become Patient H.M.; neuroanatomist Jacopo Annese, who dissected Patient H.M.’s brain; and the author himself.

Need to Know: Dittrich lets the reader know the book is both a true story and a treatise on memory, that essential but largely unknown function of the human brain.

PART I: ORIGINS

One: The Fall

As a young boy in Connecticut, Henry Gustave Molaison was hit by a bicycle, causing a brain injury that led to his epilepsy, a disease that has been studied by physicians since the time of Hippocrates. Henry, who suffered epileptic seizures and, later, long-term memory loss, would become the most studied patient in the history of neuroscience. However, his identity was kept a well-guarded secret, both by the surgeon who operated on him, Dr. Scoville, and the researcher who later studied him, Dr. Suzanne Corkin.

Need to Know: This chapter relates the beginning of Henry Molaison’s journey from accident victim to epilepsy patient to prized scientific specimen. It also reproduces, in dialogue form, some of Henry’s interviews with researchers, giving an idea of how fragmented and incomplete his memory was.

Two: Crumpled Lead and Rippled Copper

At his Connecticut home, Dr. Scoville kept a collection of ancient instruments used in brain surgery, which was practiced as early as four thousand years ago by the Egyptians. Papyrus scrolls show that they treated head injuries—which were usually sustained in battle—with a combination of religious incantations and practical medicine. Their treatment was conservative and their guiding principle was that the injuries should be dressed, but that the brain itself, even if it were exposed, should not be touched.

Need to Know: Throughout history, physicians who treated head injuries did not explore the brain itself, given their lack of knowledge about it. This did not change until the 1880s, when the first neurosurgeries were performed by Dr. Gottlieb Burckhardt in Switzerland.

Three: Dream Jobs

Henry Molaison suffered his first epileptic fit at age fifteen. The seizures became more frequent, causing him to be fired from his job at a factory. He returned to high school and graduated, but was not allowed to receive his diploma in the ceremony with the rest of the students for fear he might have an episode.

Years later, when being interviewed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Henry had vague and disjointed recollections of his childhood, and of anything prior to the lobotomy that was performed on him at age twenty-seven.

Dr. Scoville, the surgeon who operated on Henry, was the son of a wealthy Philadelphia family. As a young man, he was plagued by self-doubt, a quality that clashed with the brilliant and arrogant adult he later became. William eventually overcame his uncertainties and enrolled in medical school at the University of Pennsylvania.

Need to Know: After he was lobotomized, Henry Molaison’s constant state of mind was that of having been recently awakened from a dream, a condition known hypnopompia. In his dreams, oddly enough, he imagined becoming a brain surgeon.

Four: The Bridge

Norman J. Terry was a daredevil stuntman who died in 1930 when he attempted to dive into the Hudson River from the still-unfinished George Washington Bridge. Not long after, William Scoville, then twenty-four, climbed the long suspension cables to one of the bridge’s towers, where he spent the night in the cold and descended the following morning. Afterward, he recounted the story many times.

Years later, the author undertook a similar ascent in Egypt, where he climbed to the pinnacle of the Great Pyramid in Cairo. As to why he did it, Dittrich says it was a way of commemorating his entry into professional life; he had just obtained his first full-time job as a journalist. Dittrich theorizes that this was also the motivation for the climb by his grandfather, who at the time he ascended the bridge was halfway through medical school and had begun curing patients.

Need to Know: Young William Scoville’s daring ascent of the George Washington Bridge is interpreted by the author as a rite of passage into adulthood and professional life. However, it also portends the recklessness that Scoville would later display as a surgeon.

Five: Arline

During his many interviews with researchers, one of Henry’s most outstanding memories was of a boyhood crush on a girl named Arline, a fellow student at Catholic school in Connecticut. However, as a result of the lobotomy, Henry had no sexual desire or interest in women; doctors concluded that the operation had rendered him asexual.

Nor did he feel physical pain. During repeated experiments with a dolorimeter—an instrument used to inflict pain for research purposes—Henry never reacted. He was also capable of eating large amounts of food, at times consuming two entire dinners, one after the other. This was due partly to his amnesia—he couldn’t recollect having eaten the first meal.

Need to Know: The operation that severely reduced the functions of Henry’s brain and cut off its natural responses to food, sex, and pain, would later lead to discoveries that revolutionized the field of neuroscience.

PART II: MADNESS

Six: Pomander Walk

Dr. Scoville was drafted into the army in 1943, commissioned as a major and posted to Walla Walla, Washington. There, in January 1944, Scoville’s wife Emily suffered a paranoiac, delusional outburst that culminated in a suicide attempt. Her husband, shocked by the episode, moved the family back to Connecticut, where his wife was confined to the Institute of Living, a mental hospital, at the time considered to be one of the most progressive in the country. Upon arrival at the institute, Mrs. Scoville went into a violent outburst, prompting attendants to remove her to South One, a building where a range of therapies were performed.

Need to Know: Despite its reputation as a forward-thinking mental hospital, the Institute of Living employed therapies and procedures that are today regarded as brutal, including electroshock therapy and lobotomy.

Seven: Water, Fire, Electricity

At the Institute of Living, Emily Scoville was subjected to the therapeutic treatments in use at the time. The first was hydrotherapy, which consisted of long periods of immersion in cold water to induce hypothermia (dangerously low body temperature), a state that was believed to have sedative effects. She was also given pyretotherapy, in which fevers of up to 106 degrees were artificially induced by placing the patient in a closed, heated chamber. When she didn’t respond adeq...

Table of contents

• Title
• Disclaimer
• Contents
• Context
• Overview
• Summary
• Timeline
• Cast of Characters
• Direct Quotes and Analysis
• Trivia
• What’s That Word?
• Critical Response
• About Luke Dittrich
• For Your Information
• Bibliography
• Copyright