Includes index.

Part I: Origins. The fall ; Crumpled lead and rippled copper ; Dream jobs ; The bridge ; Arline -- Part II: Madness. Pomander walk ; Water, fire, electricity ; Melius anceps remedium quam nullum ; The broken ; Room 2200 ; Sunset Hill ; Experiment successful, but the patient died ; Unlimited access ; Ecphory ; The vacuum and the ice pick -- Part III: The hunt. It was brought into the sea ; Proust on the operating table ; Fortunate misfortunes ; Henry Gustave Molaison (1926-1953) -- Part IV: Discovery. Where angels fear to tread ; Monkeys and men ; Interpreting the stars ; The son-of-a-bitch center ; The MIT research project known as the amnesic patient H.M. -- Part V: Secret wars. Dewey defeats Truman ; A sweet, tractable man ; It is necessary to go to Niagara to see Niagara Falls ; Patient H.M. (1953-2008) ; The smell of bone dust ; Every day is alone in itself ; Postmortem.

"In the late 1930s, in asylums and hospitals across America, a group of renowned neurosurgeons worked to develop and refine a new class of brain operation--the lobotomy--that they hoped would eradicate everything from schizophrenia to homosexuality...The most important test subject to emerge from this largely untold chapter was a 27-year-old factory worker named Henry Molaison...Journalist Luke Dittrich uses his case as a starting point for a kaleidoscopic journey, from the first recorded brain surgeries in ancient Egypt to the cutting-edge laboratories of MIT...It is also, at times, a deeply personal journey: Dittrich's grandfather was the brilliant, morally complex surgeon who operated on Molaison--and thousands of other patients..."--From dust jacket.