ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses cases of major memory disorder associated with hippocampal pathology in Dr Z, a civil engineer and a glove cutter. In all these cases, the clinical picture was initially a diagnostic puzzle that was only solved when the cases came to post-mortem, where the location of pathology was confirmed as the medial temporal lobe. In general, we do think that neuropsychology cases could contribute to our understanding of the normal mind, especially where they provide observations that refute or confirm predictions of a model or theory of how the human mind works. These historical cases do harmonise with current thinking relating to the fractionation of human memory and the key role of hippocampal and related structures in memory consolidation and retrieval.
