Dr. Heidenhoff's Process

A doctor has found a way to remove a memory surgically — to take shame out of a mind and leave the person intact — and a girl who has been ruined by a moment's folly is offered it. Bellamy's Looking Backward sold hundreds of thousands and spawned more than 160 Nationalist Clubs; this earlier novel of 1880 asks whether guilt is the disease or the cure, and the ending has been argued about ever since.