The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical TalesIn his most extraordinary book, "one of the great clinical writers of the 20th century"(The New York Times)recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders. Oliver Sacks'sThe Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hattells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.If inconceivably strange, these brilliant tales remain, in Dr. Sacks's splendid and sympathetic telling, deeply human. They are studies of life struggling against incredible adversity, and they enable us to enter the world of the neurologically impaired, to imagine with our hearts what it must be to live and feel as they do. A great healer, Sacks never loses sight of medicine's ultimate responsibility: "the suffering, afflicted, fighting human subject." |
Contents
Introduction page | 3 |
Introduction page | 87 |
Cupids Disease page | 102 |
Copyright | |
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abstract agnosia amnesia aphasia apraxias asked autistic brain cerebral child Christina clinic concrete convulsive cortex described disease disorders dream eidetic memory emotional epilepsy epileptic especially excited extraordinary eyes face Familiar music Familiar voice feeling felt function Haldol hands Hughlings Jackson human imagination impulse inner intensity Jimmie José Korsakov's Korsakov's syndrome L-Dopa least live look lost Luria mammillary bodies Martin memory mental migraine mind Mistook His Wife Mnemonist modular arithmetic narrative natural neurologists neurology Neuropsychology never normal numbers patients Penfield perception perhaps phantom physiological Postscript powers primes proprioception prosopagnosia reality Rebecca recognise reminiscence retarded retrograde amnesia Sacks's scene seemed seen seizures sense sensory smell smile songs sort speak speech strange sudden suddenly syndrome temporal lobe temporal-lobe thing thought tics tion tone Tourette Tourette's Tourette's syndrome twins uncon vision visual visual agnosia wholly wondered words