![]() Scoville grabbed a long metal tube and began cutting and sucking out tissue gram by gram he eventually removed three inches’ worth of hippocampus on each side. The hippocampus sits at ear level and has the rough shape and diameter of a curled thumb. With what looked like an elongated shoehorn, he nudged aside H.M.’s frontal and temporal lobes and peered inside. As cerebrospinal fluid drained away, the brain settled down in its cavity, giving Scoville more room to work. Scoville peeled back his patient’s scalp, then used a hand crank and one-dollar drill saw from a local hardware store to remove a bottle cap’s worth of bone from above each eye. ![]() ![]() H.M.’s operation took place on September 1, 1953. >Scoville peeled back the scalp, then used a hand crank and a drill saw from a local hardware store to remove a bottle cap’s worth of bone from above each eye. Unfortunately Scoville neglected to do careful followup tests until November 1953 - after he’d convinced H.M. ![]() ![]() Although it was hard to be sure in people with such disturbed minds, they seemed to suffer no ill effects, and two women in particular showed a marked reduction in seizures. In the early 1950s he started removing the hippocampi (you have one in each hemisphere) from a few psychotics. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |