preserve our own personal worlds. Sometimes they grow ill, sometimes they grow cancerous, sometimes they simply grow old. But most of them do so according to their own mandates, far beyond our control. Most of us have brains, in other words, that do what they damn please.
Henry Molaison did not.
From the day of his operation and until the day of his death, Henry’s brain could no longer follow its own natural inclinations. Many of its essential circuits had been disrupted or sealed off, and the impact of this intervention was persistent and ubiquitous. After its surgical transformation, Henry’s brain, rather than doing what it damn pleased, was able to do only what it could, under radically altered and diminished circumstances.
That transformation of Henry’s brain is what transformed a forgettable boy from St. Peter’s school, whose own boyhood crush didn’t even remember him, into the unforgettable amnesic Patient H.M. Scientists would end up studying almost every aspect and implication of Henry’s brain, and what they learned revolutionized brain science.
The story of what they learned from Patient H.M. and his incomplete brain, however, is itself greatly diminished without first learning the story of what led my grandfather to make those devastating, enlightening cuts. That story is a dark one, full of the sort of emotional and physical pain, and fierce desires, that Patient H.M. himself couldn’t experience. It’s a story that’s never been told, and even now, fingers on the keyboard, I hesitate.
PART II
MADNESS
SIX
POMANDER WALK
T here were people in the cellar. My grandmother could hear them. She had thought she was alone in the house, except for her children, who were asleep in their bedrooms. Now it appeared she was wrong. The children were asleep and my grandmother was not and she could hear people in the cellar.
She was terrified.
It was late January 1944, in a comfortable single-family home on Frankland Street in Walla Walla, Washington. My grandfather, as usual, was at work, this time on an overnight shift at the U.S. Army’s McCaw General Hospital, where he served as chief of neurosurgery. Just the day before, he had come back from a weeklong conference in Spokane. They had been married for ten years, and it had always been like that, his career constantly pulling him away.
Their wedding took place during the final year of his internship at Hartford Hospital, and in 1935 they moved from Hartford to Ithaca, New York, where my grandfather became an assistant resident in psychiatry at Cornell University. From there it was on to Manhattan, where he completed a residency in neurology at Bellevue Hospital. A neurosurgery residency at Massachusetts General Hospital followed soon after, and from there, in quick succession, he completed residencies and appointments in three other hospitals and clinics, from Baltimore to Boston, honing his skills under James Poppen and Walter Dandy, two of the best neurosurgeons of the day, before returning to Hartford in 1939, where he founded Hartford Hospital’s neurosurgical department. Neurosurgery quickly became a calling, not just a job. “Neurosurgery was my great desire,” he’d write years later. “I couldn’t stand the meditation in Neurology and Psychiatry in those days. The technical perfection of Poppen and a summer with Dandy thrilled and excited me. How could anyone choose any other specialty; cardiac surgery—only a pump; thoracic surgery—only a ventilator; orthopedic surgery—such crude instruments; urology—a sewage system appealing to the more morbid followers of Freud.” He embraced brain surgery—that most difficult, demanding, and consequential of medical specialties—with all his heart.
He had been a practicing neurosurgeon for five years when the U.S. Army called him up for active duty and made him a major in the Medical Corps. He began his military career stationed at Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington, D.C., though
Henry Molaison did not.
From the day of his operation and until the day of his death, Henry’s brain could no longer follow its own natural inclinations. Many of its essential circuits had been disrupted or sealed off, and the impact of this intervention was persistent and ubiquitous. After its surgical transformation, Henry’s brain, rather than doing what it damn pleased, was able to do only what it could, under radically altered and diminished circumstances.
That transformation of Henry’s brain is what transformed a forgettable boy from St. Peter’s school, whose own boyhood crush didn’t even remember him, into the unforgettable amnesic Patient H.M. Scientists would end up studying almost every aspect and implication of Henry’s brain, and what they learned revolutionized brain science.
The story of what they learned from Patient H.M. and his incomplete brain, however, is itself greatly diminished without first learning the story of what led my grandfather to make those devastating, enlightening cuts. That story is a dark one, full of the sort of emotional and physical pain, and fierce desires, that Patient H.M. himself couldn’t experience. It’s a story that’s never been told, and even now, fingers on the keyboard, I hesitate.
PART II
MADNESS
SIX
POMANDER WALK
T here were people in the cellar. My grandmother could hear them. She had thought she was alone in the house, except for her children, who were asleep in their bedrooms. Now it appeared she was wrong. The children were asleep and my grandmother was not and she could hear people in the cellar.
She was terrified.
It was late January 1944, in a comfortable single-family home on Frankland Street in Walla Walla, Washington. My grandfather, as usual, was at work, this time on an overnight shift at the U.S. Army’s McCaw General Hospital, where he served as chief of neurosurgery. Just the day before, he had come back from a weeklong conference in Spokane. They had been married for ten years, and it had always been like that, his career constantly pulling him away.
Their wedding took place during the final year of his internship at Hartford Hospital, and in 1935 they moved from Hartford to Ithaca, New York, where my grandfather became an assistant resident in psychiatry at Cornell University. From there it was on to Manhattan, where he completed a residency in neurology at Bellevue Hospital. A neurosurgery residency at Massachusetts General Hospital followed soon after, and from there, in quick succession, he completed residencies and appointments in three other hospitals and clinics, from Baltimore to Boston, honing his skills under James Poppen and Walter Dandy, two of the best neurosurgeons of the day, before returning to Hartford in 1939, where he founded Hartford Hospital’s neurosurgical department. Neurosurgery quickly became a calling, not just a job. “Neurosurgery was my great desire,” he’d write years later. “I couldn’t stand the meditation in Neurology and Psychiatry in those days. The technical perfection of Poppen and a summer with Dandy thrilled and excited me. How could anyone choose any other specialty; cardiac surgery—only a pump; thoracic surgery—only a ventilator; orthopedic surgery—such crude instruments; urology—a sewage system appealing to the more morbid followers of Freud.” He embraced brain surgery—that most difficult, demanding, and consequential of medical specialties—with all his heart.
He had been a practicing neurosurgeon for five years when the U.S. Army called him up for active duty and made him a major in the Medical Corps. He began his military career stationed at Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington, D.C., though
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