The Day His World Stood Still tells “The Strange Story of H.M.”:
When twenty-seven year old Henry M. entered the hospital in 1953 for radical brain surgery that was supposed to cure his epilepsy, he was hopeful that the procedure would change his life for the better. Instead, it trapped him in a mental time warp where TV is always a new invention and Truman is forever president. The removal of large sections of his temporal lobes left Henry unable to form any new personal memories, but his tragic loss revolutionized the field of psychology and made ‘H.M.’ the most-studied individual in the history of brain research.Henry grew up outside of Hartford, Connecticut, and was by all accounts an amiable young man with above average intelligence. He liked to go ice skating and to listen to mystery shows on the radio, which he enjoyed because he could often deduce the villain ahead of the program detective. Then on his sixteenth birthday, Henry had his first grand mal seizure during a celebratory trip to the city with his parents. After that point, the paralyzing seizures arrived with increasing frequency, until by the summer of 1953, he was experiencing as many as eleven episodes per week. He was unable to hold a steady job, and his prospects for independent living seemed dim. There were not many effective treatments available for epilepsy in 1953, so it was with a mixture of hope and trepidation that Henry’s family turned to Dr. William Scoville and his experimental surgery.