Following twenty years of close friendship with author Wilbert Smith, Vertus Hardiman reveals the truth about his horrifying experience hidden since age five. His life is a moving example of humility, success, and achievement while enduring long standing suffering. The story tells of Vertus Hardiman and nine other children, each attending the same elementary school in Lyles Station Indiana""who, in 1927, was severely irradiated during a medical experiment conducted at the local county hospital. The experiment was misrepresented as a newly developed cure for the scalp fungus known as ringworm. But in reality, the ringworm fungus was merely the lure used to gain access to children whose unsuspecting parents blindly signed permission slips for the treatment. Vertus was age five and the youngest. As remarkable and shocking as the story may appear, it is not an indictment on inhumane government-sanctioned medical experimentation. Rather, Hole in the Head: a Life Revealed reflects the incredible strength of one man who survived the harshest imaginable circumstances through the power of who and what he was determined to become. His simplicity and life philosophy always lifted the spirits of those he touched. Remarkably, not one person in Vertus's community was aware of his suffering because he always wore a wig or woolen beanie cap to hide his shame. He stated, "For over seventy-one years, only four individuals outside a few medical specialists have ever seen my condition. I hide it because I look like some monster." But in reality, Vertus was the kindest example of human love Wilbert had ever met""always choosing love over hate and success over excuses and failure. This incredible story inspires us to change our outlook on life, while teaching the true meaning of love, forgiveness, and acceptance. Journey with us through this rich and unforgettable story

Essays on great figures and important issues, advances and blind alleys—from trepanation to the discovery of grandmother cells—in the history of brain sciences. Neuroscientist Charles Gross has been interested in the history of his field since his days as an undergraduate. A Hole in the Head is the second collection of essays in which he illuminates the study of the brain with fascinating episodes from the past. This volume's tales range from the history of trepanation (drilling a hole in the skull) to neurosurgery as painted by Hieronymus Bosch to the discovery that bats navigate using echolocation. The emphasis is on blind alleys and errors as well as triumphs and discoveries, with ancient practices connected to recent developments and controversies. Gross first reaches back into the beginnings of neuroscience, then takes up the interaction of art and neuroscience, exploring, among other things, Rembrandt's “Anatomy Lesson” paintings, and finally, examines discoveries by scientists whose work was scorned in their own time but proven correct in later eras.

After buying and reselling a valuable book, Jill must find the current owner or lose her life to the assassin who demands she return the book to him

Ex-army musketry trainer, Jay Benson and his wife Lucy's dream of running a shooting school turns sour as the school heads towards certain closure. They need money - quickly, and a lot of it. At the eleventh hour Augusto Savanto, head of a vast corporation in Venezuela, walks into their lives with a proposition they can scarcely refuse - he will pay them $50,000 to turn his son into an expert marksman, in nine days. Desperate for money they accept the challenge but find themselves in a deadly game of ruthless vendettas and vengeful murder.

A heavily expanded edition of Joe Mellen's legendary, long out-of-print auto-trepanation memoir. A heavily expanded edition of Joe Mellen's legendary, long out-of-print auto-trepanation memoir, Bore Hole takes us deep into the dawning of the UK's psychedelic counter culture, and into a mind breaking free from the confines of a traditional English upbringing. Travelling to Morocco and Ibiza, then back to the first spring of swinging London, Joe Mellen discovers the pleasures of hashish, is captivated by the visionary intensity of LSD and, after meeting the Dutch psychedelic guru Bart Huges, attempts the ultimate head trip, the bore hole. As well as a selection of unseen archive photographs, this edition includes a new postscript, essays, appendices and a 1967 interview with Bart Huges.

Based on a true story, Pliss tells the tale of railroad foreman Phineas Gage who had a three-foot long, 13-pound iron rod blast through his skull, taking out part of his brain, and of the doctor who treated him and valiantly fought the medical establishment to prove the merit of the case.

This book tells the story of Vertus Hardiman and nine other young children who were severely irradiated as part of a medical experiment in Lyles Station, Indiana, in 1927.

True story of Hayes sudden brain hemorrhage at twenty-two - and the heartache and strength that it took to overcome it.

Explores the murder of the controversial Ojibwe chief who led his people through the first difficult years of dispossession by white invaders--and created a new kind of leadership for the Ojibwe.

A spirited, wry, and utterly original memoir about one woman's struggle to make her way and set up a life after doctors discover a hole the size of a lemon in her brain. The summer before she was set to head out-of-state to pursue her MFA, twenty-six-year-old Cole Cohen submitted herself to a battery of tests. For as long as she could remember, she'd struggled with a series of learning disabilities that made it nearly impossible to judge time and space—standing at a cross walk, she couldn't tell you if an oncoming car would arrive in ten seconds or thirty; if you asked her to let you know when ten minutes had passed, she might notify you in a minute or an hour. These symptoms had always kept her from getting a driver's license, which she wanted to have for grad school. Instead of leaving the doctor's office with permission to drive, she left with a shocking diagnosis—doctors had found a large hole in her brain responsible for her life-long struggles. Because there aren't established tools to rely on in the wake of this unprecedented and mysterious diagnosis, Cole and her doctors and family create them, and discover firsthand how best to navigate the unique world that Cole lives in. Told without an ounce of self-pity and plenty of charm and wit, Head Case is ultimately a story of triumph, as we watch this passionate, loveable, and unsinkable young woman chart a path for herself.