“The broken illuminate the unbroken.”

Luke Dittrich, is the grandson of one of the most acclaimed neuropsychological surgeons and lobotomists in American medical history - Warren Beecher Scoville. Dittrich tells an incredibly compelling, true story, filled with well-researched science, interviews, and family access to documents and people regarding his grandfather's work and behavior.

Scoville kept his patients awake and talking during brain surgery so that he could determine if he had damaged the brain of epileptics, homosexuals, and promiscuous women enough to change their socially unacceptable behavior. When talk, or in some cases, singing had subsided, the doctor knew the patient was changed. “The best method of course is to cut until the patient becomes confused.” Both Scoville and Walter Jackson Freeman II hoped that lobotomies brought about a certain level of social acceptability because, they both believed, the world was full of misfits.

The Nuremberg Code, effected because of WWII Nazi experiments, was often ignored in mid-20th century medical circles by some notable science people. One doctor, Marin-Foucher, published his experiment’s results. At the very beginning of his report, he said that he had been inspired by "the study of the Germans and hypothermia in World War II.” In the south, it was acceptable to experiment on people of color before anesthesia was effective or available.

Broken people have always illuminated the science-minded unbroken, but until the 30’s the former had been broken by accident or birth. By the mid 1950’s damaging human brains became acceptable in scientific circles. Remedies for epileptics, homosexuals and promiscuous women, involved removal of the larynx, castration, and lobotomies, as science tried to understand the real function of areas of the brain. The bombshell at the end fully illuminates the hubris of people who ignore limits.

This will be one of the best books of 2018 that I have read, I’m sure. Thank you, John Kubie for the recommendation and the introduction to your ancestor.

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

Luke Dittrich Random House 2016