Oliver Sacks

Oliver W. Sacks

Describes the author's work with institutionalized patients at Mount Carmel Hospital and the dramatic effects of the drug L-DOPA on twenty patients suffering from encephalitic Parkinsonism

Awakenings

Gavin

An oppressive book or a book about the maximal oppression. It is a dozen case studies of profoundly frozen people: contorted, whispering, impassive for decades - at best. It describes one of the most poignant real events I think I've ever heard of: the medical reversal of effective, affective death - and but only a temporary reversal. Sacks really hadn't developed his style by this point: I quite liked the technical medical report feel, but it both highly technical and highly melodramatic: there is much of infinitudes of the soul, titratabilities, and perseveratably festinative resipiscences in it. Also a nice subtle stylistic note: he breaks apart dead metaphors to revive them (e.g. "wild life", "death bed").

Also lacking is his later grand balancing of romance with reason.* For instance, he falls right off the edge on pp.97, seeing numbers as enemies of people:

  

  I suddenly realised the infinite nature, the qualitative infinity of the phenomenon... One speaks of infinite anguishes, poignancies, desires, and joys - and one does so naturally, with no sense of paradox - i.e. one conceives of them in a metaphysical sense. But Parkinsonism - wasn't this categorically different? Was it not a simple, mechanical disorder of function - something essentially finite, something which could be measured in the divisions of a suitable scale? ... When I saw Hester, I suddenly realised that all I had thought about the finite, ponderable, numerable nature of Parkinsonism was nonsense. I suddenly realized, at this moment, that Parkisonism could in no sense be seen as a thing which increased or decreased by finite increments... that it was anumerical; that from its first, infinitesimal intimation it could proceed by an infinite multitude of infinitesimal increments to an infinite, and then more infinite, and still more infinite, degree of severity... [Footnote twenty years later] I see it as requiring models or concepts which had not been created in the 1960s, in particular those of chaos and nonlinear dynamics.
  

  

  

  We rationalize, we dissimilate, we pretend: we pretend that modern medicine is a rational science, all facts, no nonsense, and just what it seems. But we have only to tap its glossy veneer for it to split wide open, and reveal to us its roots and foundations, its old dark heart of metaphysics, mysticism, magic, and myth. Medicine is the oldest of the arts, and the oldest of the sciences: would one not expect it to spring from the deepest knowledge and feelings we have?
  


It's a repetitive book for a maximally repetitive disease. The wonder and personalising detail he lavishes on each case aren't enough to get me past the surprising uniformity of the bizarre symptoms and the hell of it all. Just as well I'm not a doctor.





* Call it the classical vs the romantic (as does Pirsig), Erklaerung oder Verstehen (as in Dilthey, Weber), the outside view v the inside view (Kahneman), or Logos v Mythos (as twere in ancient Greece).

Das Buch zum Film

Flavia Louise

4 stars

Very informative read. Obviously it features older ideas since it was written quite a bit ago.

Hailed as a medical classic, and the subject of a major feature film as well as radio and stage plays, and various TV documentaries, Awakenings is the extraordinary account of a group of twenty patients. Rendered catatonic by the sleeping-sickness epidemic that swept the world just after the First World War, all twenty had spent forty years in hospital: motionless and speechless; aware of the world around them, but exhibiting no interest in it - until Dr Sacks administered the then-new drug, L-DOPA, which caused them, temporarily, to awake from their decades-long slumber.

Maxime van der Wal

2.5 stars
Some positives: the writing in  Awakenings  is significantly better than in  The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat . I particularly enjoyed reading the case histories. Sacks has a humane approach to every patient and their stories are remarkable. I was also pleased to see there was a glossary (unlike in  The Man... ) - especially when first reading it, the glossary was very helpful. 

I was, however, a bit disappointed with the editing. For one, the prologue and epilogue/appendices take up a lot of space. The case histories only take up 45% of the book (yes, I calculated it). The rest of the book consists of essays, Sacks' perspectives and the history of the drug L-DOPA and Parkinsonism in general. I personally wasn't really interested in those scientific essays, and thought they were unnecessary for the most part. Sacks also  really  loves his footnotes; in total there are 175 (!) in my edition (1990) - these footnotes were long and as a result made the book less readable. 

Despite my complaints, I am grateful Sacks gave these post-encephalitic patients a voice and I'm glad I got to read their stories. 

Also, I thought this passage in one of the appendices (A History of the Sleeping-Sickness) was relevant to the situation we're currently in: "Pandemics of viral diseases, as Lederberg points out, are a natural and almost predictable phenomenom (Culliton, 1990), and there is certainly no reason to think that  encephalitis lethargica  is extinct. Our best protection, as von Economo stressed, is a continuing vigilance, so that we are never again, as in 1918, taken unawares."

Describes the effects of the drug L-DOPA on twenty patients with encephalitic Parkinsonism

Alyssa Mastrocco

Maddie

'The story of a disease that plunged its victims into a prison of viscous time, and the drug that catapulted them out of it' Guardian Hailed as a medical classic, and the subject of a major feature film as well as radio and stage plays and various TV documentaries, Awakenings by Oliver Sacks is the extraordinary account of a group of twenty patients. Rendered catatonic by the sleeping-sickness epidemic that swept the world just after the First World War, all twenty had spent forty years in hospital: motionless and speechless; aware of the world around them, but exhibiting no interest in it - until Dr Sacks administered the then-new drug, L-DOPA, which caused them, temporarily, to awake from their decades-long slumber.

Awakenings

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