Patient H.M.: a story of memory, madness, and family secrets by Luke Dittrich. This book focuses on the history of one of the most studied patients in neurology and related brain studies. I read a paper on this patient about 10 years ago and his story was repeated again in Moonwalking with Einstein. I haven't been able to get him out of my mind, so when I saw this book, I thought it would be worthwhile reading about the details of the individual now that he has died and his identity no longer requires protection.
Started: 7/11/2017
Completed: 8/2/2017
Recommended By: Nobody
Recommendation: Not Recommended
Review:
It is frustrating to not like the author of a book. I found Dittrich's character questionable as described by himself early in the book. He correlated his own character with that of his grandfather who performed the surgery on Patient H. M. At various points in the book Dittrich gets lost in his own efforts to write this book which is, perversely, effectively a biography of another person. It is also uncomfortable that this book is told in the first person.
It also seems odd to add a ton of personal family history to a book about a patient of one's grandfather. While there is some insight to be had based on the author's maternal grandmother's experiences in mental hospitals. It is difficult to understand how these insights are anything less than background material fleshing out a story that is not better for this material.
Later in the book we hear about how both the author and his grandfather tried their hand at bull fighting. I find it harder and harder to get anything from this book. As the book concludes we hear about the grandfather's penchant for fast cars and an unsubstantiated suggestion that he had performed a lobotomy on his wife. This is a pretty gross man. The author shows a little bit better set of ethics then his grandfather, but it is a small improvement and his outrage is focused at his mother's best friend in childhood. His outrage is appropriate given the situation he has described (shredding the test results of almost 50 years of testing on Patient H. M.). It appears that no records were actually shredded.
So, what I could take away:
It is frustrating to not like the author of a book. I found Dittrich's character questionable as described by himself early in the book. He correlated his own character with that of his grandfather who performed the surgery on Patient H. M. At various points in the book Dittrich gets lost in his own efforts to write this book which is, perversely, effectively a biography of another person. It is also uncomfortable that this book is told in the first person.
It also seems odd to add a ton of personal family history to a book about a patient of one's grandfather. While there is some insight to be had based on the author's maternal grandmother's experiences in mental hospitals. It is difficult to understand how these insights are anything less than background material fleshing out a story that is not better for this material.
Later in the book we hear about how both the author and his grandfather tried their hand at bull fighting. I find it harder and harder to get anything from this book. As the book concludes we hear about the grandfather's penchant for fast cars and an unsubstantiated suggestion that he had performed a lobotomy on his wife. This is a pretty gross man. The author shows a little bit better set of ethics then his grandfather, but it is a small improvement and his outrage is focused at his mother's best friend in childhood. His outrage is appropriate given the situation he has described (shredding the test results of almost 50 years of testing on Patient H. M.). It appears that no records were actually shredded.
So, what I could take away:
- MIT strongly protected Patient H. M., but treated him like a possession rather than a person.
- It is possible that Patient H. M. may have had memory deficits prior to his surgery which might taint or otherwise inform all the studies done on him.
- MIT and Professor Corkin in particular, did their best to treat Patient H. M. well in terms of his role as a subject for study.
- The distinction between episodic and semantic memory is not something I have previously seen and it was nicely and well described.
- Dittrich and his family seem to have questionable morals.
