A review by mike_morse
Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets by Luke Dittrich

3.0

I'm not sure why I found this book so disappointing. I know I was hoping for a different book. I wanted to know what scientists believe about the mind and memory and how it works. And in a way, this book is a history of scientists trying to figure out just that question, but the book never tells us what they found. A better subtitle would have been, "A History of the Lobotomy". Lobotomies we do learn about in graphic detail. What I want to know is how you can drill big holes in someone's skull, insert X-acto knives deep in those holes, swirl them around randomly, all while the patient is awake, yet the patient has no adverse consequences after the "surgery" except maybe some slight mellowing of their personality. Yet, Mary's Mom gets a little blood in her brain, and goes into a coma and dies?