The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and

Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks

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Original Title: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales
ISBN: 0684853949
ISBN13: 9780684853949
Autor: Oliver Sacks
Rating: 4.2 of 5 stars (3661) counts
Original Format: Paperback, 243 pages
Download Format: PDF, DJVU, iBook, MP3.
Published: April 2nd 1998 / by Touchstone / (first published 1985)
Language: English
Genre(s):
Nonfiction- 3,169 users
Psychology- 1,858 users
Science- 1,580 users
Health >Medicine- 346 users
Medical- 269 users
Biology >Neuroscience- 257 users

Description:

In his most extraordinary book, "one of the great clinical writers of the twentieth century" (The New
York Times) recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable
world of neurological disorders. Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells 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."

About Author:

Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE, was a British neurologist residing in the United States, who has written
popular books about his patients, the most famous of which is Awakenings, which was adapted
into a film of the same name starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro.
Sacks was the youngest of four children born to a prosperous North London Jewish couple: Sam,
a physician, and Elsie, a surgeon. When he was six years old, he and his brother were evacuated
from London to escape The Blitz, retreating to a boarding school in the Midlands, where he
remained until 1943. During his youth, he was a keen amateur chemist, as recalled in his memoir
Uncle Tungsten. He also learned to share his parents' enthusiasm for medicine and entered The
Queen's College, Oxford University in 1951, from which he received a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in
physiology and biology in 1954. At the same institution, he went on to earn in 1958, a Master of
Arts (MA) and an MB ChB in chemistry, thereby qualifying to practice medicine.
After converting his British qualifications to American recognition (i.e., an MD as opposed to MB
ChB), Sacks moved to New York, where he has lived since 1965, and taken twice weekly therapy
sessions since 1966.
Sacks began consulting at chronic care facility Beth Abraham Hospital (now Beth Abraham Health
Service) in 1966. At Beth Abraham, Sacks worked with a group of survivors of the 1920s sleeping
sickness, encephalitis lethargica, who had been unable to move on their own for decades. These
patients and his treatment of them were the basis of Sacks' book Awakenings.
His work at Beth Abraham helped provide the foundation on which the Institute for Music and
Neurologic Function (IMNF), where Sacks is currently an honorary medical advisor, is built. In
2000, IMNF honored Sacks, its founder, with its first Music Has Power Award. The IMNF again
bestowed a Music Has Power Award on Sacks in 2006 to commemorate "his 40 years at Beth
Abraham and honor his outstanding contributions in support of music therapy and the effect of
music on the human brain and mind".
Sacks was formerly employed as a clinical professor of neurology at the Albert Einstein College of
Medicine and at the New York University School of Medicine, serving the latter school for 42
years. On 1 July 2007, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons appointed Sacks
to a position as professor of clinical neurology and clinical psychiatry, at the same time opening to
him a new position as "artist", which the university hoped will help interconnect disciplines such as
medicine, law, and economics. Sacks was a consultant neurologist to the Little Sisters of the Poor,
and maintained a practice in New York City.
Since 1996, Sacks was a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters (Literature). In
1999, Sacks became a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences. Also in 1999, he became an
Honorary Fellow at The Queen's College, Oxford. In 2002, he became Fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences (Class IVHumanities and Arts, Section 4Literature).[38] and he
was awarded the 2001 Lewis Thomas Prize by Rockefeller University. Sacks was awarded
honorary doctorates from the College of Staten Island (1991), Tufts University (1991), New York
Medical College (1991), Georgetown University (1992), Medical College of Pennsylvania (1992),
Bard College (1992), Queen's University (Ontario) (2001), Gallaudet University (2005), University
of Oxford (2005), Pontificia Universidad Catlica del Per (2006). He was appointed Commander
of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours. Asteroid 84928
Oliversacks, discovered in 2003 and 2 miles (3.2 km) in diameter, has been named in his honor.

Other Editions:
- (Paperback)

- The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (Paperback)

- The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales (Kindle Edition)
- L\'uomo che scambi sua moglie per un cappello (Paperback)

- The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (Paperback)

Books By Author:

- Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

 - An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales

- Hallucinations

- Awakenings

- On the Move: A Life

Books In The Series:

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- The Man Who Tasted Shapes

- Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind

- The Mind of a Mnemonist: A Little Book about a Vast Memory

- Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

- In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind

- Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

- The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature

- Mapping the Mind

 - The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life

- The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History

- The Other Brain: From Dementia to Schizophrenia, How New Discoveries

about the Brain Are Revolutionizing Medicine and Science

- Into the Silent Land: Travels in Neuropsychology

 - The Woman with a Worm in Her Head: And Other True Stories of Infectious
Disease

- A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of
the Brain

- Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism

- The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

 - The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe
Without Design

Rewiews:

Mar 09, 2008

Dru
Rated it: liked it
Dear Dr. Sacks,
On page 112 of the paperback edition of your book, the second paragraph begins with the
following sentence:
"And with this, no feeling that he has lost feeling (for the feeling he has lost), no feeling that he has
lost the depth, that unfathomable, mysterious, myriad-levelled depth which somehow defines
identity or reality."
I've read this sentence at least twelve times, and I still don't even have the slightest inkling of what
the hell it means. What is the subject? What is the ve
Dear Dr. Sacks,
On page 112 of the paperback edition of your book, the second paragraph begins with the
following sentence:
"And with this, no feeling that he has lost feeling (for the feeling he has lost), no feeling that he has
lost the depth, that unfathomable, mysterious, myriad-levelled depth which somehow defines
identity or reality."
I've read this sentence at least twelve times, and I still don't even have the slightest inkling of what
the hell it means. What is the subject? What is the verb? Why is the word "that" italicized (twice?)?
Good God man, what are you trying to tell me?
Sincerely, Baffled in Brooklyn
Some people may think "well, if I read the whole chapter, I'm sure I could decipher the meaning."
To those people I say: good luck, Charlie. I hope you may succeed where I have so miserably
failed.
This book has many fascinating studies of neurological disorders, and the stories behind the
patients are easily understood and, in many cases, enthralling. However, Dr. Sacks seems to give
his readers too much credit when he throws off "hyperagnosia", "Korsokovian", and "meningioma"
like he assumes we had read an entire neurology textbook before picking this one up. Also, many
of his sentences (like the example above) include so many digressions and sudden turns that
each one could practically be its own M. Night Shaymalan film pitch. All of this might have to do
with the fact that it was written in the eighties, when I presume people were smarter.
203 likes
24 comments

Lisa
Again, my comment above contains typos and grammatical errors I'd love to go back and fix, yet I
still have no idea how to get back into something I'v
Again, my comment above contains typos and grammatical errors I'd love to go back and fix, yet I
still have no idea how to get back into something I've already posted in order to do so. Help would
be welcome from kind-hearted souls, as I've also yet to find a help menu.Thanks, my friend to be!

Apr 12, 2016 11:42AM

Tori
Haha I think your page 112 quote is the exact point where I started skimming and ultimately
decided I didn't want to finish this book.

May 08, 2016 08:30AM