Patient H.M (Vintage Publishing)

In the summer of 1953, maverick neurosurgeon William Beecher Scoville performed a operation on a twenty-seven-year-old epileptic patient named Henry Molaison. The operation failed to eliminate Molaison's intractable seizures, but it did have an unintended effect: Henry was left profoundly amnesic, unable to create long term memories.