Jonathan Mirsky
Invasive Procedures
Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets
By Luke Dittrich
Chatto & Windus 440pp £18.99 order from our bookshop
Horrifying. There is no other word for the madness and monstrous ambition of such surgeons as William Beecher Scoville, Luke Dittrich’s grandfather. For years during the mid-20th century they tampered with their patients’ brains – about which they knew next to nothing – to satisfy their curiosity. Scoville rarely understood what he was doing or what the effects would be on his patients as he scraped at and gouged into their brains. Unfortunately, he and his colleagues had plenty of subjects – the ‘guests’ in asylums.
There is much memorable in Dittrich’s book, despite its disjointed narrative. A historically minded freelance journalist, Dittrich draws attention to the Nazi doctors who experimented on prisoners, for which they were condemned at Nuremberg, and the US Public Health Service doctors who in 1932 gave syphilis to unsuspecting black
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'A publicist interviewed by Fairrie praises Collins and her heroines ... because these were "women who behaved like men". Is that supposed to be good, given how men behaved towards Collins?'
Peter Conrad reviews a new documentary about Jackie Collins.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/easy-writer
'Walk down your supermarket pet food aisle and you’ll be hard pressed to find a single brand that claims to be made with high-welfare meat. More expensive pet food should not be about spoiling our cats but about sparing the farmed beasts we feed them.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/meattoo
'Two things prevent [this book] from collapsing under the weight of its own wayward ambition. Colin Jones, one of the finest living scholars of early modern France, is no ordinary historian. And the day in question, 27 July 1794, was no ordinary day'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/night-of-the-guillotine