Staff Books:
On the third of July, in the early 1930s, a young boy walking home in Hartford, Connecticut was struck by a bicyclist. The boy, Henry Molaison, recovered consciousness in five minutes and was well enough to celebrate the 4th of July the next day. But the residual effect of the blow to the head would result in ever-worsening seizures. Twenty years later, in an attempt to relieve his severe epilepsy, Henry had one of the very first double lobotomies performed on a non-psychiatric patient. Although he would live another 55 years, Henry’s memories would stop in 1953. Patient H.M., as he would be known from then on, would become the most studied patient in the history of neuroscience, although he would never realize it. This moving, thought-provoking book traces the beginnings of neurosurgery while engaging the reader in a personal narrative. The book was written with unique insight by the grandson of Patient H.M.’s neurosurgeon.
