Monday, June 9, 2014

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat - Oliver Sacks

Another of the belated birthday gift that I chose for it's name. Of the few choices given to me, this one had the most interesting title. So I read the description and decided that it was worth reading. The reviews were good and one can consider experimenting with gifts.

Dr. Sacks is a renowned neurologist who worked in America and Britain. His fascination with Luria and his work led him to adopt the romantic style of writing that Luria professed. The clinical tales are more than facts recorded as statistics. It is history and emotions which, as Dr. Sacks believes, forms an equally important part of the story, or case. Thus his stories have a rather personal touch to them. He empathises (rather too much I believe) with his patients and sees them not as dilapidated items in need of repair, but as individuals struggling to maintain their identity in the midst of a chaotic mental tempest. A fascinating TED talk by Dr. Sacks will give a picture of him and his way of connecting.


The book recounts twenty four tales of his erstwhile patients who suffered from some neurological problem. The cases are divided into four sections : Losses : dealing with the classical problem of loss of some brain function; Excesses : dealing with the excess of a brain function; Transports : dealing with visions and hallucinations; and the World of the Simple : dealing with autistic patients and their enhanced skills. The book presents a number of interesting brain irregularities like loss of the ability of identify people and things, phantom limbs, loss of control over one's own body, religious visions, enhanced smelling ability, identifying primes and mnemonic memory. Sacks raises existentialist and moralist questions on how the patients are and ought to be treated by the society as well as the doctors and nurses. The last section, dealing with the autistic and 'morons' was much more personal than the earlier ones, perhaps because of the elongated period of association with the patients, for unlike in the other cases, the patients suffering from autism did not "get better".

Dr. Sacks' vivid portraits of his patients was extremely fascinating. Leads one to question how and why the brain is treated as a model that has a "normalcy". At times though, Dr. Sacks' empathy and appreciation for the patients was a bit too redundant and drag. He has more interesting books but I will come back to him later.