William Beecher Scoville (January 13, 1906 – February 25, 1984) was an American

neurosurgeon Neurosurgery or neurological surgery, known in common parlance as brain surgery, is the medical specialty concerned with the surgical treatment of disorders which affect any portion of the nervous system including the brain, spinal cord and peri ...

Hartford Hospital Hartford Hospital is an 938-bed acute care teaching hospital located in the South End of Hartford, Connecticut. Hartford Hospital was established in 1854. The hospital campus is located on Seymour Street in Hartford and is directly adjacent to the ...

Hartford Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since t ...

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capita ...

. Scoville established the Department of Neurosurgery at Connecticut's Hartford Hospital in 1939. He performed surgery on Henry Gustav Molaison in 1953 to relieve

epilepsy Epilepsy is a group of non-communicable neurological disorders characterized by recurrent epileptic seizures. Epileptic seizures can vary from brief and nearly undetectable periods to long periods of vigorous shaking due to abnormal electrica ...

that damaged the hippocampus of both the right and left temporal lobes of Molaison's

brain A brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It is located in the head, usually close to the sensory organs for senses such as vision. It is the most complex organ in a ve ...

and left him with a

memory disorder Memory disorders are the result of damage to neuroanatomical structures that hinders the storage, retention and recollection of memories. Memory disorders can be progressive, including Alzheimer's disease, or they can be immediate including disorde ...

Biography

Scoville was born in

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, on January 13, 1906. Although he had a strong interest in automobiles throughout his life, his father pushed William toward a career in medicine. After completing his undergraduate degree at Yale (B.A., 1928), he attended and graduated from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

School of Medicine in 1932. In 1941, he became board certified in

neurosurgery Neurosurgery or neurological surgery, known in common parlance as brain surgery, is the medical specialty concerned with the surgical treatment of disorders which affect any portion of the nervous system including the brain, spinal cord and pe ...

. Also, in 1941 he started the first neurosurgical residency training program in Connecticut. In 1953 Scoville offered Henry Gustav Molaison, the patient now widely known as H. M., a chance to cure Molaison's epilepsy through a pioneered experimental procedure. With the approval of the patient and his family, Scoville was to perform an experimental resection of several portions of the temporal lobes, a procedure which had previously performed in psychotic patients. Scoville had a "hunch" that the

hippocampus The hippocampus (via Latin from Greek , ' seahorse') is a major component of the brain of humans and other vertebrates. Humans and other mammals have two hippocampi, one in each side of the brain. The hippocampus is part of the limbic system, ...

was responsible, and based on this erroneous guess, removed both of Molaison's hippocampi – sucking them out using a medical tool which comprises a cauterizing blade and suction vacuum, while the anesthetized but conscious Molaison sat in the operating chair. Later, the hippocampus became known to be crucial in the formation of memories – which is why Molaison was rendered unable to form new memories for the rest of his life. Scoville consulted with a leading Canadian surgeon,

Wilder Penfield Wilder Graves Penfield (January 26, 1891April 5, 1976) was an American-Canadian neurosurgeon. He expanded brain surgery's methods and techniques, including mapping the functions of various regions of the brain such as the cortical homunculus. ...

at McGill University in Montreal, who, with psychologist

Brenda Milner Brenda Milner (née Langford; July 15, 1918) is a British-Canadian neuropsychologist who has contributed extensively to the research literature on various topics in the field of clinical neuropsychology. Milner is a professor in the Departme ...

, had previously reported on two other patients’ memory deficits. As a result of this work (her PhD thesis) Milner has become one of the most famous neuropsychologists in the world. Scoville contributed to the development of the aneurysm clip. His modification was to place a coiled spring with an axis parallel to the plane of clip closure. Over the course of his life Scoville trained a total of 63 neurosurgeons, 46 from the U.S. and 17 foreign. Scoville died in car crash on February 25, 1984. William Scoville' s grandson Luke Dittrich wrote a book about "Patient H.M." and his grandfather.Luke Dittrich. ''Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets'' (2016) . Random House In the book, in reference to Dr. Scoville removing both hippocampi without evidence they were the cause of H.M.'s epilepsy, the author quotes his grandfather as saying "I prefer action to thought, which is why I am a surgeon. I like to see results." (p. 214)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Scoville, William Beecher 1906 births 1984 deaths American neurosurgeons 20th-century American physicians 20th-century surgeons