An amnesiac remembers virtually nothing, even events that happened seconds in the past, but he plays the piano beautifully.
Clive Wearing, an eminent English musician and musicologist, suffered a brain infection in 1985 which affected parts of his brain concerned with memory. He was left with a memory span of only seconds, which Oliver Sacks calls "the most devastating case of amnesia ever recorded." In this tale from Musicophilia, Dr. Sacks examines how Clive and his wife struggle to cope with his condition, discovering ways of providing tranquility and meaning to a life that is constantly in crisis. Music provides Clive with an opportunity to seamlessly exist in the moment and connect with the past in ways that his amnesia otherwise renders impossible.
A man mistakes his wife for a hat.
In the title story of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat Dr. Sacks meets a music teacher, Dr. P., who has taken to confusing objects and people. Although Dr. P. is still able to think, remember, and function regarding abstract ideas, music, and mechanical processes, he confuses his foot with his shoe, cannot recognize photographs of his family, and tries to pick up his wife’s head as if it were a hat. Dr. P.’s agnosia extends to his inner world as well: when describing a novel, he cannot remember anything of its physical or visual imagery. Dr. P. is also a painter, and in noticing the recent shift of Dr. P.’s paintings into abstraction, Oliver Sacks sees evidence of a degenerative disease or tumor in the visual parts of the brain. However, as long as Dr. P. immerses himself in musical routines, he can dress himself, play music, and teach his students.
Patients who have been asleep for decades suddenly spring to consciousness.
Awakenings is Dr. Sacks’ account of survivors of the encephalitis lethargica outbreak of the 1920s and their return to the world after decades of "sleep." Dr. Sacks tells his patients’ stories from the onset of their illnesses through their declines into Parkinsonian akinesia and their responses to the drug L-dopa. With L-dopa, many of the patients experience rapid shifts from sleep to manic-like behavior. Along the way, Dr. Sacks explores his patients’ experiences of time and space and their struggles to cope with having missed out on decades of their lives. This book was the inspiration for the 1990 film of the same name starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams.
A hippie becomes stuck in the late 1960s.
In An Anthropologist on Mars, Dr. Sacks encounters Greg F., a hippie who joined the counter-culture of the 1960s, became politically radical, experimented with "higher consciousness" through drugs, and settled down as a Hare Krishna. At the Krishna temple, Greg became known for losing worldly concern, his freedom from desire, and his "transcendent" smile. Even the onset of blindness was interpreted as Greg’s enlightenment. However, when Greg’s parents retrieve him from the temple after six years, it is clear that something is wrong, and doctors remove a grapefruit-sized tumor from Greg’s skull. The tumor has left Greg unable to remember anything since the late 1960s or to form new memories, making him truly "The Last Hippie." Dr. Sacks learns that Greg can form new memories, of sorts, through repetition. In the 1980s, Greg can hum along to new Grateful Dead songs that he has heard played in concert, though he cannot remember having been to the concert with Dr. Sacks.
On a mountainside in Norway, a bull charges and injures a man's leg; later, the man feels that his leg is "lost."
In A Leg To Stand On, Dr. Sacks himself becomes the patient. Following his injury in Norway, Dr. Sacks expects to undergo a normal recuperation. Instead, he embarks upon a strange journey, feeling that his leg is no longer part of his body. Using Dr. Sacks’s triple-consciousness of physician, patient, and writer, this book underscores why it is not enough to understand maladies through science alone.
This is a very partial listing of the medical and personal conundrums that Dr. Sacks explores. For a complete list of tales, read Oliver Sacks’s books. |
