Oliver Sacks Essays

Oliver Sacks, M.D. is a physician, a best-selling author, and a professor of neurology at the NYU School of Medicine. The New York Times has referred to him as “the poet laureate of medicine.” He is best known for his collections of neurological case histories, including The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, Awakenings, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain and An Anthropologist on Mars. Awakenings, his book about a group of patients who had survived the great encephalitis lethargica epidemic

Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks uses many rhetorical devices, including imagery, anecdote, and pathos, to achieve his purpose of describing to his audience what exactly an ear worm is and how it can affect people.

Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Trials, Oliver Sacks accounts some interesting encounters with his patients (or “clients” as he believes is a more respectable term to call them). He has organized his collection of case studies by the neurologic disorder themes of the clients: Losses, Excesses, Transports, and the World of the Simple. The first part of the book is a collection of neurological disorders that Sacks categories as losses, or deficits. He describes their difference

The man who mistook his wife for a hat and other clinical tales, by Oliver Sacks, is a captivating collection of medical cases. The book is meant to be read by healthcare professionals, as the author uses an abundance of medical terminology, but can also be read by the everyday person, because Sacks explains the medical jargon. As a professor of neurology, Oliver Sacks invites his readers into the most interesting cases during his clinical experience. This book broadened my knowledge of medical cases

1. In the closing pages of The Namesake Gogol muses “Without people around him to call him Gogol, no matter how long he himself lives, Gogol Ganguli will, once and for all, vanish from the lips of loved ones, and so, cease to exist.” (Lahiri 289) Taking this thought into account, to what extent is identity contingent upon the perceptions of others? While what Gogol believes may seem like a generalized subjective assumption, this is an opinion that is only specific to Gogol. To Gogol, a name makes

Musicophilia: difference or disorder? In his book, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (2008), Oliver Sacks presents “musicophilia” as a mental disorder that has verifiable effects in the physical and emotional health of the “victim.” Sacks uses many research summaries and case histories to discuss this brain and behavioral condition that he sees as a problem to be fixed. I suggest that musicophilia, though typically considered a phenomenal disability, offers extraordinary abilities to some

This book is divided into four simple sections titled and in order: “Losses,” Excesses,” “Transports,” and “The World of the Simple.” Within each section, Oliver Sacks explains his clinical stories and shows how physiological and physiological disorders can have many behavioral consequences. For example, within the “Losses” section, the audience will meet a man who has amnesia – goes back in time to the year 1945; another story is a woman that cannot comprehend her own body; A man who constantly

Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks I chose this book because I find hallucinations to be interesting. When I was younger I used to see floating shapes, I called them “floaties.” One of the times I remember seeing them was once on Easter morning, I saw a bunch of tiny green “peas” coming out of the foot rest on our couch, like a waterfall. I’ve stopped seeing them but I never really did get an answer to what they were. Over the course of the first two hundred pages Dr. Sacks talks about many kinds of

Nurse Ratched, the head administrative nurse at a mental institution, exercised her near-absolute power over every aspect of the patients’ lives. Over time, she gradually gained a strong position of power, which was only strengthened by her ability to determine the fates of her patients. She was presented as a controlling, yet peaceful character, ensuring that her calculate outlook on the patients was upheld on every measure. Her strong personality is not seen as superficial, rather permanent through

In the writing, “To See and Not See” by Oliver Sacks is about a man who has gone for forty- five years without his eye sight. Virgil was his name and after he met a doctor who was capable of helping him regain his ability to see. Amy, Virgil’s wife decided to take her to see a doctor about his eyesight. Dr. Hamlin performed an unbelievable surgery that allowed him to see again. Many reasons why there was a different conclusion then what most readers expected. Based on sight,the senses and the culture

reminded of what they have and what they can lose. What I feel is the joy of life, the gift of life, the freedom of life, the wonderment of life!” said Leonard Lowe in the movie Awakenings. Filmed in 1990, Awakenings is based on the story of Dr. Oliver Stack and a handful of mental institution patients trapped in a catatonic state, unable to reach out to the world around them, and condemned to spend the rest of their life as a prisoner of their own body. While the rest of the institution’s staff

The story is by Oliver Sacks and he discusses the story of a blind man whom has been blind for forty-five years before the doctors were able to perform a miraculous surgery on him to allow him to see again. The remarkable part of the story is that the outcome was not the storybook ending where the man can see and everything makes perfect sense to him. (Once I began writing this, I began to remember a movie with a similar theme). The outcome is that the man is so overcome by the stimulus that he

to classify it as the norm of how something happens to everyone. Oliver Sacks, the author of “The Mind’s Eye”, is a perfect example of someone who attempted to do this. When trying to understand how blindness affects those who are its victims, he was searching for a standard experience that he believed all blind people go through. He states, “Was there any such thing, I wondered, as a typical blind experience” (Sacks, 336)? Oliver was under the impression that there was a conventional process where

Dr. Oliver Sacks, a neurologist and writer tells a story of a patient that changed his outlook on and the way he will see his future patients as neurologist forever. This Patients name is Rebecca. The Narrative starts off by giving the reader an idea of who Rebecca is. Dr. Sacks describes Rebecca as a very clumsy nineteen-year-old girl, just as Rebecca's grandmother describes her. The issue that Dr. Sacks has, is he often basis his opinion of most people including Rebecca, on their outside appearance

The short story, “The Case of the Colorblind Painter” follows the life of a painter who went color blind after an automobile accident. The physician who writes this literary work, Oliver Sacks, recounts this story from his perspective. Sacks starts off with telling the story of the colorblind painter, Jonathon I. Jonathan I. got into an automobile accident and received a horrible headache but went to sleep soon after the accident. Upon waking the next morning, Jonathan I. could not recall what

neurological disorders, it is a psychology book that is written by Oliver Sacks, and it was published in 1985. This book tells the story of many different individuals who are suffering and dealing with neurological disorders in the form of case studies. Not only does it discuss there experiences in great detail, but it also shows the different emotions that each of these individuals experience on a daily basis, as well as the emotions of Sacks himself during these periods. The book mainly focuses on how

“You are a wonderful musician, and music is your life.” The excerpt from Oliver Sacks’ “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” covers the author’s experience as a neurologist and a patient named Dr. P. Although Dr. P. had a strong musical background and appeared normal, he had trouble identifying and visualizing faces. Sacks’ patient, Dr. P. was a well-known music teacher and musician. He also painted and sang. He was known as a very intelligent man but had a problem recognizing faces.

Oliver Sacks: The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. I’d like to take you on a journey where perspective will be the biggest lesson of all. If you were giving some life-changing news that could hurt your career, how would you take it? How would it affect you? In this story, a musician used the very thing that made him money to also give him purpose. Dr. P was not only a teacher of music but a teacher of how to choose joy. Dr. P was an excellent musician, and also a great singer for numerous

Neurologist Oliver Sacks in “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: and Other Clinical Tales” takes an inside look at people who have severe illnesses and shows the reader what it’s like to be them. In his patients, he really finds what they excel at, despite their disabilities. A lot of doctors will look at a patient’s chart, solve their illness, and be done. Dr. Sacks saw his patients beyond a piece of paper. He got to know the individual, what they like, how they live, and this is truly incredible

The two excerpts from The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks made me have many tangential thoughts about William, his thinking, and his identity. Who is he? Who does he think he is? Can he actively think? However, in the spirit of our class, I re-read the passage several times to understand what kinds of readings are taking place. In this passage I find three interesting types of reading. The first two are 1) Sacks’ reading of the audience’s reading of William and 2) the audience’s