Man Who MIstook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks (2011-06-01)

Didn't fully understand the meaning behind it being an mp3, although the packaging said it played like a CD. Only, it doesn't. Stuck it in my player and I hear nothing. Not their fault I guess but I wish the packaging had been a little more clear.

This book was assigned to me over the summer for preparation for my AP Psychology class. The book is very infromational and the stories were very intriguing, but i wasnt able to understand the scientific terms used by Oliver Sacks. I would recommend this book for anyone that wants to be interested but you must be ready to do a little bit of research along with your reading

Very in-depth report of a psychologist and people he has diagnosed and treated with various experiences, before during and after being subjected t a wide variety of musical subjects and the effects it had on their conditions...from a woman who could not see but hear but see smells and hear sights -- very interesting in how the brain works and mystifies us.

Dr. Sacks, of blessed memory, seems to have been more infatuated with his own medical ramblings than with the cases themselves. Being a physician, I was surprised to find myself skipping his case discussions because they seemed overdone and irrelevant. I loved the cases, and wish he had devoted his discussions to making the cases more accessible and understandable to the lay reader.

I picked this book for my book club last month after seeing it on a top list of non-fiction books. I thought the premise sounded interesting. The book, however, was hard to get through. The author uses a lot of medical terminology that I am unfamiliar with. Also, the book is quite outdated. Some of this terms would be offensive if used today (especially in the section about people with mental handicaps). Overall, my book club agreed that the concept was interesting but the author wasn't the best choice.

Product-wise the book is flawless the storyline is amazing Oliver Sacks really knows how to make learning about mental and medical diseases interesting it arrived fast and the cover art is absolutely beautiful in my opinion but I must give it a four star rating because my English Professor borrowed it and did not give it back for 3 months

Scary stories. The author reveals the reasons why the individuals developed their amnesia in some cases. For younger people it is usually alcohol. For people of my age (over 80), it is some kind of senility and I keep testing myself regularly for that. Last year I completed a 100 page 'story of my life' while I still possessed most of my faculties. So far, I seem to remember what I wrote about a year ago and I have a computer file with the text readily available.

I am not sure I should read all the stories in this book, intellectually the answer is YES, emotionally it is NO.

I did NOT read the second half of the book paying that much attention to 'idiots savants'. The author presents some hypothesis about their methods of calculation that are definitely the standard methods - many of these individuals simply cannot handle standard multiplication or division tables. They seem to work in another dimension.

To me it is all somewhat similar to all religions. Religious concepts are (to me) totally preposterous but, unlike the very special skill of the 'savants', very common and, perhaps, good for you and the society.

My approach is that of an agnostic, not an atheist. There may be something to the idea of god, the author (perpetrator) of the Big Bang. That does not mean that the Almighty is involved with our daily chores as some people may believe.

Similarly, the savants are actually kind of holy people possessing talents mysterious to majority of us.

Knowing perfectly well that I cannot solve their mysteries (it never occurred to me to even try), I just categorize the savants (and the second part of the book) as basically a waste of time since nothing can be done about the savants anyway. If they have seizures, they, of course, should be helped. Otherwise they, in my opinion, should be left alone.

I think the book is OBJECTIVELY OK (three stars) but SUBJECTIVELY scary to me at this stage of my long life (hence two starts only)...

I was extremely disappointed that the audio was not read by Dr. Sacks himself. I have an old recording on an old cassette with him reading and it was so much better. If there is a dvd of his own voice reading, I would buy it in a New York minute!
Something was lost in having an American accent doing an Englishman's performance. You asked for a comment. I hope it helped.

Disappointing purchase.

The story is wonderful, and the merchant handled this
order with speed and care. Highest rating to them both.

But the book was dimly printed on flimsy paper, and not
worth the money for that reason only.

If you've ever wanted to read up on some of the most interesting psychological abnormalities out there, and you like to read books by well-known psychologists in the field, you won't be disappointed here. This book is an easy read, comprehensive, and interesting.

I'm currently a sophomore in college, and I had to order this book for my Introduction to Psychology as a Major course last semester. Of all the books that I had to read for school that semester, this is the only one I read cover to cover without being told to. I believe that for the course itself, I only had to read about nine of the short stories; but I read every single one of them. I couldn't put it down.

The book is written in simple, easy to read English; unlike a number of other books that you'll most likely need to read for psychology. In fact, I don't even think you need to be studying psychology to buy and enjoy this book. I would recommend this to my friends who have nothing to do with psychology. It's amazingly eye-opening to see so many different conditions that you've never even heard about, or perhaps even think about ones that you've already heard of in a completely new way!

I remember one passage in particular about a man who had Tourette's syndrome; most people would assume that such a condition would have a negative impact on one's life, and that those who have it would want to be rid of it. But this isn't the case in this passage; in fact, the man in question takes medicine to control his Tourette's and feels even worse afterward. He says it erased a part of his personality, and he doesn't feel quite the same without it. This, and other interesting stories lay inside this book.

Not only do I think this book is great for college students or anyone else who wants to read it, but getting it through the store was a pleasure as well. It was nearly half the price of the one my school was trying to sell in the bookstore, and it came with a bonus additional section on the back that the version being sold by my college didn't have. I have the store Prime, so it also shipped very quickly and was there by the time I needed to start reading it for class. Excellent buy, overall.

Dr. Oliver Sacks was a physician, author, and professor of neurology who published several books about individuals with neurological problems. In this book Dr. Sacks discusses patients whose brain malfunctions cause a variety of 'maladies' including: a musician who lost the ability to see faces or recognize familiar objects; a former sailor who believed the year was permanently 1945; a man who thought his leg belonged to someone else; and other unusual afflictions.

To provide a feel for the book I'll just give a capsule description of (what I think are) the most interesting cases.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat

Dr. P was a talented musician and music teacher whose problems began when he lost the ability to see people's faces - though he could recognize them by their voices and movements. The problem worsened to the point where Dr. P mistakenly thought inanimate objects - like fire hydrants, parking meters, and furniture knobs - were humans.

In time Dr. P could no longer identify everybody objects. For example, he thought his shoe was his foot and vice versa. Though Dr. P was not diagnosed, physicians speculate that he had a brain tumor or brain damage that caused 'agnosia' - "the loss of ability to recognize objects, persons, sounds, shapes, or smells."

The title of the story refers to the fact that - when looking for his hat one day - Dr. P mistook his wife for a hatrack, took hold of her head.....and tried to put it on.

Luckily, Dr. P retained the ability to play and teach music, and was able to continue with his fulfilling career.

*****

The Lost Mariner

In 1975, Dr. Sacks saw Jimmie G - a 49-year-old man who left the Navy in 1965 after serving for more than two decades. Jimmie seemed confused about his current situation but was able to describe his school days and his experiences during and after WWII - which he talked about in the present tense.

Dr. Sacks learned that - in Jimmie's mind - the year was perpetually 1945 and he was 19-years-old. Jimmie couldn't recall anything that post-dated 1945 and was unable to form ANY new memories. In fact, if Dr. Sacks walked out of the room and returned, Jimmie thought they were meeting for the first time.

When shown a mirror, Jimmie was shocked at his 'old' appearance, and - though his brother was long-married with grandchildren - thought his sibling was a single man in accounting school.

Apparently Jimmie was competent until he left the Navy, but by 1971 was totally disoriented - probably from severe alcohol abuse. It was determined that Jimmie suffered from amnesia due to 'Korsakov's Syndrome' - "an amnestic disorder usually associated with prolonged ingestion of alcohol."

*****

The Disembodied Lady

Christina was a bright, athletic 27-year-old computer programmer who worked from home. When health problems required the removal of her gall bladder, Christina was treated with prophylactic antibiotics prior to the operation. This was a common precaution, not expected to have any deleterious effects.

Shortly before the surgery Christina had a dream in which she lost sensation in her hands and feet. A couple of days later Christina REALLY lost sensation.....in her entire body. Christina couldn't feel her arms, hands, legs, feet, etc. She couldn't walk, was unable to pick things up, and so on. Christina felt like her body was 'dead, not real, not hers.'

Christina was diagnosed with inflammation of the nerves in her limbs. As a result, Christina lost her sense of 'proprioception' - "the ability to sense the relative positions of body parts without looking at them or thinking about it." It's unknown whether the prophylactic antibiotics caused this or not.

Eventually, Christina learned to use her other senses - especially vision - to compensate for her loss of propioception. Christina had to consciously monitor and regulate every motion, making her movements difficult and clumsy. Nevertheless, Christina persevered and tried to live as normal a life as possible.

*****

The Man Who Fell Out Of Bed

Dr. Sacks was called in to see a man who had been admitted to the hospital because of a problem with his leg. After falling asleep in the hospital, the patient woke up to find 'someone's leg in the bed'.....a severed human limb. The man was horrified, and concluded that a nurse had perpetrated a bizarre joke. The patient threw the leg out of bed, but he went with it.....because the limb was attached to him.

While Dr. Sacks was in the room, the patient began punching and tearing at his left leg. Dr. Sacks advised the man to stop, as he was injuring his own limb, but the patient refused to accept this.

The man apparently had hemiplegia - "paralysis on one side of the body".....probably caused by brain damage.

*****

Phantom

A 'phantom' is the sensation that a lost body part (usually an amputated limb) is still there.

Dr. Sacks tells the story of a sailor who accidently cut off his right index finger, but couldn't dislodge the notion that the digit was still sticking out of his hand. For the next 40 years, the sailor was wary of bringing his damaged hand near his face - to eat or scratch his nose - because the finger might poke his eye out. The sailor knew this couldn't really happen, but was unable to make the feeling go away.

The sailor was finally 'cured' when he lost sensation in ALL of his fingers due to diabetic neuropathy (nerve damage). The phantom finger 'disappeared' with the rest of his digits.

*****

Tilt

Mr. Dunston, a 93-year-old man with Parkinson's disease, tilted to the side when walking - to the point he was in danger of falling over. However Mr. Dunston was unaware of the slant, and refused to believe he wasn't upright.....until Dr. Sacks filmed him in motion.

Mr. Dunston, who had been a carpenter, attributed the problem to the loss of his inner 'spirit level' (an instrument used to determine whether a surface is perfectly horizontal or vertical).

Mr. Dunston, being a clever fellow, rigged up a 'level' that could be attached to his eyeglasses - called 'spirit spectacles' - which he could use to correct his posture. The spirit spectacles became very popular with patients afflicted with Parkinson's disease.

*****

Eyes Right

After a massive stroke, Mrs. S - a woman in her sixties - lost the ability to see anything on the left side. If Mrs. S's dessert was on the left side of her tray, she couldn't see it; in fact Mrs. S couldn't even see the food on the left side of her plate. This 'left blindness' extended to everything, so that Mrs. S. would only make up the right side of her face, etc.

To compensate, Mrs. S got a rotating wheelchair and swiveled in a circle until things came into view - a crafty solution to (some of) her problems.

*****

Cupid's Disease

Natasha, a 90-year-old woman, had begun feeling unusually 'frisky' at the age of 88 - giggling, telling jokes, and flirting with men.

Natasha realized this was 'inappropriate', and - surmising she was physically ill - consulted a doctor. Natasha reported that, at age twenty, she had contracted 'Cupid's Disease' (syphilis) - which was treated, but apparently not eradicated.

In fact Natasha WAS suffering from neurosyphilis - an infection of the brain and/or spinal cord caused by Treponema pallidum (the bacteria that causes syphilis). The bacteria were stimulating her cerebral cortex and affecting her behavior.

Natasha didn't want to get end-stage syphilis, but didn't want to be cured either.....since she was enjoying her girlish feelings. So doctors gave Natasha penicillin to kill the microbes, but did nothing to repair her cerebral cortex - allowing the elderly woman to remain playful. (At 90 years old, why not. LOL)

*****

Reminiscence

Mrs. O'C - an 88-year-old Irishwoman living in an old age home in NY - was a little deaf but otherwise in good health. One night Mrs. O'C dreamed of her childhood in Ireland, complete with a woman singing Irish songs. When Mrs. O'C awoke, she still heard the Irish songs - very loud - and went to turn off the radio broadcasting the music. But there was no radio. Mrs. O'C then thought her dental fillings were picking up a broadcast, but this wasn't the case either. Finally, Mrs. O'C concluded something was wrong with her ears - and consulted a doctor.

Mrs. O'C was eventually sent to a neurologist - Dr. Sacks - but had trouble hearing him through the music. Dr. Sacks determined that the songs were neurological, probably due to a stroke that caused seizures in Mrs. O'C's temporal lobe (a part of the brain that processes music). As Mrs. O'C recovered, the music faded away.

*****

The Dog Beneath The Skin

Stephen D. was a 22-year-old medical student who regularly used amphetamines, cocaine, and PCP. One night Stephen dreamed he was a dog, and woke up with a greatly heightened sense of smell.

Stephen was able to distinguish all kinds of things by their 'aroma' including: friends, patients, streets, stores, sexual activity, foods, and so on. Unfortunately, unpleasant odors were stronger as well. Moreover, Stephen felt COMPELLED to sniff everything (like a pooch)....and had to be careful to avoid being inappropriate (LOL).

After three weeks the enhanced sense of smell disappeared, and Stephen returned to normal.

Years later, Dr. Sacks revealed that HE was Stephen D. (Naughty naughty)

*****

The World of the Simple

**I have to insert a note here. To modern ears, some of the language used in this section is very disturbing. Talking about people who are mentally challenged, Dr. Sacks uses terms like: simple, simpleton, retardate, mental cripple, idiot, moron, and dullard. Granted, these essays were written before such terms became 'forbidden.' Still, the book has been re-released several times over the years, and these words could have been changed (IMO).**

John and Michael

John and Michael were 26-year-old twins who had been institutionalized since the age of seven. They had an IQ under 60, and were variously diagnosed as autistic, psychotic, or severely retarded.

As happens with some autistic people, the twins were 'idiot savants' - "mentally handicapped persons who display brilliance in a specific area, especially involving memory."

The twins had clear memories of ALL their experiences and had a 'calender program' in their heads so that - given any date, past or future - they could instantly pair it with a day of the week. The twins were also able to recall and repeat a long string of numbers (over 300 digits).....explaining that they 'could see it.'

Perhaps most remarkable of all, the twins made up a game in which they recited increasingly large prime numbers to each other.....a feat that's almost impossible without a computer. In fact, Dr. Sacks - wanting to join the game - got a 'cheat book' of prime numbers. (Ha ha ha)

Dr. Sacks waxes poetic about the twins, saying: "The twins, though morons, hear the world's symphony, but hear it entirely in the form of numbers."

Eventually the twins were separated - 'for their own good' - which seems very sad to me.

The Autist Artist

José was a mentally handicapped man whose epileptic seizures and (possible) autism became obvious when he was eight. At that time José's family confined him to the cellar, where he was isolated and deprived of stimulation for 15 years. Finally, at the age of 22, José 'blew up in a rage' and was hospitalized.

In the hospital, José - now properly medicated - showed a remarkable talent for drawing. This was when Dr. Sacks met the patient. Dr. Sacks showed José his pocket watch and asked him to draw it. José studied the timepiece, then quickly and confidently drew a faithful fascimile.....with creative flourishes. Dr. Sacks was impressed, thinking José had more mental agility than people thought.

Durng a later visit, Dr. Sacks showed José an issue of 'Arizona Highways' magazine, which had a scene of people canoeing. José swiftly copied the canoe and canoers - making the people seem even more intense and alive than the original. To Dr. Sacks, this demonstrated José's powers of imagination and creativity.

Then, when Dr. Sacks showed José an image of a rainbow trout, the patient drew a fish of his own - with an amusing roguish look.....like a 'fish-person.' This showed not only imagination, but a sense of humor.

Eventually, surrounded by caring doctors and staff, José began to blossom. He no longer accepted his deprived state, strived to recover speech and understanding, and began to draw for self-expression.

*****

Dr. Sacks' case studies are interesting and informative, and - when originally published - shed light on afflictions that were not well understood at the time. Dr. Sacks' stories are still fascinating and instructive, and I enjoyed reading them.

I also applaud the fact that Dr. Sacks showed that mentally challenged individuals can have talents and abilities that rival those of mainstream society - which usually marginalizes these people. And I admire Dr. Sacks attempts to help his patients find happiness and meaning in their lives.

That said, there are parts of the book I didn't like. Dr. Sacks includes a GREAT DEAL of philosophical musing in his stories, in an attempt (I think) to imbue neurological afflictions with some deeper meaning. In my opinion, illnesses (even brain malfunctions) are biological phenomena. Thus they have no abstract significance, and I found the 'philosophical' sections of the book boring and sometimes incomprehensible.

I'd recommend the book to readers interested in neurology and brain function. Though I listened to the audiobook version, the individual case studies are readily available online - in case you're especially interested in one or two.

"The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat," is perhaps Oliver Sack's best known book. It details many fascinating stories, including the one that gives the book its title. The stories include ones of people who have lost certain abilities, such as the ability to recognize anything on the left half of their body as being theirs, so that they treat their left hand as a foreign object, and about the twins with IQ's around sixty who possess an amazing ability to recognize prime numbers and calculate consecutive primes of at least six digits in length.

One would miss the overall point of Sack's book if one simply saw them as interesting stories. More importantly, they are a testimony to the complexity and intricacy of the human brain. Why, for example, can a stroke or a brain lesion cause one person to lose the ability to understand the meaning of nouns (while leaving the ability to recognize verbs unscathed) and in another person the reverse is true? Why do certain autistic savants have the ability to calculate the day of the week on which any date in history or in the future will fall? A person reading this book will almost certainly come away with a renewed sense of the complexity of the brain.

Review of 'The man who mistook his wife for a hat' by Oliver Sachs.
CITATION: Sachs, O. (2011). The man who mistook his wife for a hat. London: Picador.
Reviewer: Dr William P. Palmer.

This book is 257 pages long in this edition and consists of a preface, twenty-four separate stories and a bibliography. It includes some black and white illustrations, which assist in the reader's understanding of some of the stories. All these case studies tell of people with a range of neurological disorders; their stories are told with honesty but with a deep and moving empathy for those suffering from these symptoms. Part one contains nine stories and is entitled 'losses' that illustrate the most common forms of neurological deficits such as loss of memory, loss of vision, loss of identity and the loss of many other functions. Illustrative of these conditions is the disorder that has been chosen as the title of the book 'The man who mistook his wife for a hat'. In this case study, a distinguished musician (Dr P) who did not recognise the faces of his students; he was able to cover this disability by recognising the student by some other characteristic feature such as their voice. Sachs interviews Dr P and finds that the musician is unable to recognise photographs of himself or his family except a photograph of Einstein or his brother each of whom had particular distinguishing characteristics which made them readily identifiable. He was unable to recognise a glove or its purpose. He was later unable to tell the difference between his foot and his shoe, nor would he have been able to tell the difference between his wife and a hat. Dr P's wife helped him to cope with dressing by laying out the clothes for him to wear in the same order each day and he coped by singing to himself as he was dressing making the act of dressing automatic. He was able to continue teaching until his death four years later where the autopsy revealed a massive tumour in visual parts of his brain.

Part two is entitled 'excesses' in which Sachs reports his studies of five cases where the patient suffers from a superabundance of function. Part three is entitled 'transports' in which Sachs reports his studies of six cases where the patient suffers from medical problems that lead to neurological conditions. In part four, Sachs reports his studies of four cases where the patient has what might be described as a low IQ, yet in these studies Sachs shows that his patients have a have real personality and character where superficial observations would lead them as being categorised as being 'morons'.

'The man who mistook his wife for a hat' is a superb book, bringing each one of us to a greater understanding as to what is meant by 'being human'.

BILL PALMER

Scary stories. The author reveals the reasons why the individuals developed their amnesia in some cases. For younger people it is usually alcohol. For people of my age (over 80), it is some kind of senility and I keep testing myself regularly for that. Last year I completed a 100 page 'story of my life' while I still possessed most of my faculties. So far, I seem to remember what I wrote about a year ago and I have a computer file with the text readily available.

I am not sure I should read all the stories in this book, intellectually the answer is YES, emotionally it is NO.

I did NOT read the second half of the book paying that much attention to 'idiots savants'. The author presents some hypothesis about their methods of calculation that are definitely the standard methods - many of these individuals simply cannot handle standard multiplication or division tables. They seem to work in another dimension.

To me it is all somewhat similar to all religions. Religious concepts are (to me) totally preposterous but, unlike the very special skill of the 'savants', very common and, perhaps, good for you and the society.

My approach is that of an agnostic, not an atheist. There may be something to the idea of god, the author (perpetrator) of the Big Bang. That does not mean that the Almighty is involved with our daily chores as some people may believe.

Similarly, the savants are actually kind of holy people possessing talents mysterious to majority of us.

Knowing perfectly well that I cannot solve their mysteries (it never occurred to me to even try), I just categorize the savants (and the second part of the book) as basically a waste of time since nothing can be done about the savants anyway. If they have seizures, they, of course, should be helped. Otherwise they, in my opinion, should be left alone.

I think the book is OBJECTIVELY OK (three stars) but SUBJECTIVELY scary to me at this stage of my long life (hence two starts only)...

I was extremely disappointed that the audio was not read by Dr. Sacks himself. I have an old recording on an old cassette with him reading and it was so much better. If there is a dvd of his own voice reading, I would buy it in a New York minute!
Something was lost in having an American accent doing an Englishman's performance. You asked for a comment. I hope it helped.

Disappointing purchase.

The story is wonderful, and the merchant handled this
order with speed and care. Highest rating to them both.

But the book was dimly printed on flimsy paper, and not
worth the money for that reason only.

Dr. Oliver Sacks was a physician, author, and professor of neurology who published several books about individuals with neurological problems. In this book Dr. Sacks discusses patients whose brain malfunctions cause a variety of 'maladies' including: a musician who lost the ability to see faces or recognize familiar objects; a former sailor who believed the year was permanently 1945; a man who thought his leg belonged to someone else; and other unusual afflictions.

To provide a feel for the book I'll just give a capsule description of (what I think are) the most interesting cases.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat

Dr. P was a talented musician and music teacher whose problems began when he lost the ability to see people's faces - though he could recognize them by their voices and movements. The problem worsened to the point where Dr. P mistakenly thought inanimate objects - like fire hydrants, parking meters, and furniture knobs - were humans.

In time Dr. P could no longer identify everybody objects. For example, he thought his shoe was his foot and vice versa. Though Dr. P was not diagnosed, physicians speculate that he had a brain tumor or brain damage that caused 'agnosia' - "the loss of ability to recognize objects, persons, sounds, shapes, or smells."

The title of the story refers to the fact that - when looking for his hat one day - Dr. P mistook his wife for a hatrack, took hold of her head.....and tried to put it on.

Luckily, Dr. P retained the ability to play and teach music, and was able to continue with his fulfilling career.

*****

The Lost Mariner

In 1975, Dr. Sacks saw Jimmie G - a 49-year-old man who left the Navy in 1965 after serving for more than two decades. Jimmie seemed confused about his current situation but was able to describe his school days and his experiences during and after WWII - which he talked about in the present tense.

Dr. Sacks learned that - in Jimmie's mind - the year was perpetually 1945 and he was 19-years-old. Jimmie couldn't recall anything that post-dated 1945 and was unable to form ANY new memories. In fact, if Dr. Sacks walked out of the room and returned, Jimmie thought they were meeting for the first time.

When shown a mirror, Jimmie was shocked at his 'old' appearance, and - though his brother was long-married with grandchildren - thought his sibling was a single man in accounting school.

Apparently Jimmie was competent until he left the Navy, but by 1971 was totally disoriented - probably from severe alcohol abuse. It was determined that Jimmie suffered from amnesia due to 'Korsakov's Syndrome' - "an amnestic disorder usually associated with prolonged ingestion of alcohol."

*****

The Disembodied Lady

Christina was a bright, athletic 27-year-old computer programmer who worked from home. When health problems required the removal of her gall bladder, Christina was treated with prophylactic antibiotics prior to the operation. This was a common precaution, not expected to have any deleterious effects.

Shortly before the surgery Christina had a dream in which she lost sensation in her hands and feet. A couple of days later Christina REALLY lost sensation.....in her entire body. Christina couldn't feel her arms, hands, legs, feet, etc. She couldn't walk, was unable to pick things up, and so on. Christina felt like her body was 'dead, not real, not hers.'

Christina was diagnosed with inflammation of the nerves in her limbs. As a result, Christina lost her sense of 'proprioception' - "the ability to sense the relative positions of body parts without looking at them or thinking about it." It's unknown whether the prophylactic antibiotics caused this or not.

Eventually, Christina learned to use her other senses - especially vision - to compensate for her loss of propioception. Christina had to consciously monitor and regulate every motion, making her movements difficult and clumsy. Nevertheless, Christina persevered and tried to live as normal a life as possible.

*****

The Man Who Fell Out Of Bed

Dr. Sacks was called in to see a man who had been admitted to the hospital because of a problem with his leg. After falling asleep in the hospital, the patient woke up to find 'someone's leg in the bed'.....a severed human limb. The man was horrified, and concluded that a nurse had perpetrated a bizarre joke. The patient threw the leg out of bed, but he went with it.....because the limb was attached to him.

While Dr. Sacks was in the room, the patient began punching and tearing at his left leg. Dr. Sacks advised the man to stop, as he was injuring his own limb, but the patient refused to accept this.

The man apparently had hemiplegia - "paralysis on one side of the body".....probably caused by brain damage.

*****

Phantom

A 'phantom' is the sensation that a lost body part (usually an amputated limb) is still there.

Dr. Sacks tells the story of a sailor who accidently cut off his right index finger, but couldn't dislodge the notion that the digit was still sticking out of his hand. For the next 40 years, the sailor was wary of bringing his damaged hand near his face - to eat or scratch his nose - because the finger might poke his eye out. The sailor knew this couldn't really happen, but was unable to make the feeling go away.

The sailor was finally 'cured' when he lost sensation in ALL of his fingers due to diabetic neuropathy (nerve damage). The phantom finger 'disappeared' with the rest of his digits.

*****

Tilt

Mr. Dunston, a 93-year-old man with Parkinson's disease, tilted to the side when walking - to the point he was in danger of falling over. However Mr. Dunston was unaware of the slant, and refused to believe he wasn't upright.....until Dr. Sacks filmed him in motion.

Mr. Dunston, who had been a carpenter, attributed the problem to the loss of his inner 'spirit level' (an instrument used to determine whether a surface is perfectly horizontal or vertical).

Mr. Dunston, being a clever fellow, rigged up a 'level' that could be attached to his eyeglasses - called 'spirit spectacles' - which he could use to correct his posture. The spirit spectacles became very popular with patients afflicted with Parkinson's disease.

*****

Eyes Right

After a massive stroke, Mrs. S - a woman in her sixties - lost the ability to see anything on the left side. If Mrs. S's dessert was on the left side of her tray, she couldn't see it; in fact Mrs. S couldn't even see the food on the left side of her plate. This 'left blindness' extended to everything, so that Mrs. S. would only make up the right side of her face, etc.

To compensate, Mrs. S got a rotating wheelchair and swiveled in a circle until things came into view - a crafty solution to (some of) her problems.

*****

Cupid's Disease

Natasha, a 90-year-old woman, had begun feeling unusually 'frisky' at the age of 88 - giggling, telling jokes, and flirting with men.

Natasha realized this was 'inappropriate', and - surmising she was physically ill - consulted a doctor. Natasha reported that, at age twenty, she had contracted 'Cupid's Disease' (syphilis) - which was treated, but apparently not eradicated.

In fact Natasha WAS suffering from neurosyphilis - an infection of the brain and/or spinal cord caused by Treponema pallidum (the bacteria that causes syphilis). The bacteria were stimulating her cerebral cortex and affecting her behavior.

Natasha didn't want to get end-stage syphilis, but didn't want to be cured either.....since she was enjoying her girlish feelings. So doctors gave Natasha penicillin to kill the microbes, but did nothing to repair her cerebral cortex - allowing the elderly woman to remain playful. (At 90 years old, why not. LOL)

*****

Reminiscence

Mrs. O'C - an 88-year-old Irishwoman living in an old age home in NY - was a little deaf but otherwise in good health. One night Mrs. O'C dreamed of her childhood in Ireland, complete with a woman singing Irish songs. When Mrs. O'C awoke, she still heard the Irish songs - very loud - and went to turn off the radio broadcasting the music. But there was no radio. Mrs. O'C then thought her dental fillings were picking up a broadcast, but this wasn't the case either. Finally, Mrs. O'C concluded something was wrong with her ears - and consulted a doctor.

Mrs. O'C was eventually sent to a neurologist - Dr. Sacks - but had trouble hearing him through the music. Dr. Sacks determined that the songs were neurological, probably due to a stroke that caused seizures in Mrs. O'C's temporal lobe (a part of the brain that processes music). As Mrs. O'C recovered, the music faded away.

*****

The Dog Beneath The Skin

Stephen D. was a 22-year-old medical student who regularly used amphetamines, cocaine, and PCP. One night Stephen dreamed he was a dog, and woke up with a greatly heightened sense of smell.

Stephen was able to distinguish all kinds of things by their 'aroma' including: friends, patients, streets, stores, sexual activity, foods, and so on. Unfortunately, unpleasant odors were stronger as well. Moreover, Stephen felt COMPELLED to sniff everything (like a pooch)....and had to be careful to avoid being inappropriate (LOL).

After three weeks the enhanced sense of smell disappeared, and Stephen returned to normal.

Years later, Dr. Sacks revealed that HE was Stephen D. (Naughty naughty)

*****

The World of the Simple

**I have to insert a note here. To modern ears, some of the language used in this section is very disturbing. Talking about people who are mentally challenged, Dr. Sacks uses terms like: simple, simpleton, retardate, mental cripple, idiot, moron, and dullard. Granted, these essays were written before such terms became 'forbidden.' Still, the book has been re-released several times over the years, and these words could have been changed (IMO).**

John and Michael

John and Michael were 26-year-old twins who had been institutionalized since the age of seven. They had an IQ under 60, and were variously diagnosed as autistic, psychotic, or severely retarded.

As happens with some autistic people, the twins were 'idiot savants' - "mentally handicapped persons who display brilliance in a specific area, especially involving memory."

The twins had clear memories of ALL their experiences and had a 'calender program' in their heads so that - given any date, past or future - they could instantly pair it with a day of the week. The twins were also able to recall and repeat a long string of numbers (over 300 digits).....explaining that they 'could see it.'

Perhaps most remarkable of all, the twins made up a game in which they recited increasingly large prime numbers to each other.....a feat that's almost impossible without a computer. In fact, Dr. Sacks - wanting to join the game - got a 'cheat book' of prime numbers. (Ha ha ha)

Dr. Sacks waxes poetic about the twins, saying: "The twins, though morons, hear the world's symphony, but hear it entirely in the form of numbers."

Eventually the twins were separated - 'for their own good' - which seems very sad to me.

The Autist Artist

José was a mentally handicapped man whose epileptic seizures and (possible) autism became obvious when he was eight. At that time José's family confined him to the cellar, where he was isolated and deprived of stimulation for 15 years. Finally, at the age of 22, José 'blew up in a rage' and was hospitalized.

In the hospital, José - now properly medicated - showed a remarkable talent for drawing. This was when Dr. Sacks met the patient. Dr. Sacks showed José his pocket watch and asked him to draw it. José studied the timepiece, then quickly and confidently drew a faithful fascimile.....with creative flourishes. Dr. Sacks was impressed, thinking José had more mental agility than people thought.

Durng a later visit, Dr. Sacks showed José an issue of 'Arizona Highways' magazine, which had a scene of people canoeing. José swiftly copied the canoe and canoers - making the people seem even more intense and alive than the original. To Dr. Sacks, this demonstrated José's powers of imagination and creativity.

Then, when Dr. Sacks showed José an image of a rainbow trout, the patient drew a fish of his own - with an amusing roguish look.....like a 'fish-person.' This showed not only imagination, but a sense of humor.

Eventually, surrounded by caring doctors and staff, José began to blossom. He no longer accepted his deprived state, strived to recover speech and understanding, and began to draw for self-expression.

*****

Dr. Sacks' case studies are interesting and informative, and - when originally published - shed light on afflictions that were not well understood at the time. Dr. Sacks' stories are still fascinating and instructive, and I enjoyed reading them.

I also applaud the fact that Dr. Sacks showed that mentally challenged individuals can have talents and abilities that rival those of mainstream society - which usually marginalizes these people. And I admire Dr. Sacks attempts to help his patients find happiness and meaning in their lives.

That said, there are parts of the book I didn't like. Dr. Sacks includes a GREAT DEAL of philosophical musing in his stories, in an attempt (I think) to imbue neurological afflictions with some deeper meaning. In my opinion, illnesses (even brain malfunctions) are biological phenomena. Thus they have no abstract significance, and I found the 'philosophical' sections of the book boring and sometimes incomprehensible.

I'd recommend the book to readers interested in neurology and brain function. Though I listened to the audiobook version, the individual case studies are readily available online - in case you're especially interested in one or two.

"The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat," is perhaps Oliver Sack's best known book. It details many fascinating stories, including the one that gives the book its title. The stories include ones of people who have lost certain abilities, such as the ability to recognize anything on the left half of their body as being theirs, so that they treat their left hand as a foreign object, and about the twins with IQ's around sixty who possess an amazing ability to recognize prime numbers and calculate consecutive primes of at least six digits in length.

One would miss the overall point of Sack's book if one simply saw them as interesting stories. More importantly, they are a testimony to the complexity and intricacy of the human brain. Why, for example, can a stroke or a brain lesion cause one person to lose the ability to understand the meaning of nouns (while leaving the ability to recognize verbs unscathed) and in another person the reverse is true? Why do certain autistic savants have the ability to calculate the day of the week on which any date in history or in the future will fall? A person reading this book will almost certainly come away with a renewed sense of the complexity of the brain.

Review of 'The man who mistook his wife for a hat' by Oliver Sachs.
CITATION: Sachs, O. (2011). The man who mistook his wife for a hat. London: Picador.
Reviewer: Dr William P. Palmer.

This book is 257 pages long in this edition and consists of a preface, twenty-four separate stories and a bibliography. It includes some black and white illustrations, which assist in the reader's understanding of some of the stories. All these case studies tell of people with a range of neurological disorders; their stories are told with honesty but with a deep and moving empathy for those suffering from these symptoms. Part one contains nine stories and is entitled 'losses' that illustrate the most common forms of neurological deficits such as loss of memory, loss of vision, loss of identity and the loss of many other functions. Illustrative of these conditions is the disorder that has been chosen as the title of the book 'The man who mistook his wife for a hat'. In this case study, a distinguished musician (Dr P) who did not recognise the faces of his students; he was able to cover this disability by recognising the student by some other characteristic feature such as their voice. Sachs interviews Dr P and finds that the musician is unable to recognise photographs of himself or his family except a photograph of Einstein or his brother each of whom had particular distinguishing characteristics which made them readily identifiable. He was unable to recognise a glove or its purpose. He was later unable to tell the difference between his foot and his shoe, nor would he have been able to tell the difference between his wife and a hat. Dr P's wife helped him to cope with dressing by laying out the clothes for him to wear in the same order each day and he coped by singing to himself as he was dressing making the act of dressing automatic. He was able to continue teaching until his death four years later where the autopsy revealed a massive tumour in visual parts of his brain.

Part two is entitled 'excesses' in which Sachs reports his studies of five cases where the patient suffers from a superabundance of function. Part three is entitled 'transports' in which Sachs reports his studies of six cases where the patient suffers from medical problems that lead to neurological conditions. In part four, Sachs reports his studies of four cases where the patient has what might be described as a low IQ, yet in these studies Sachs shows that his patients have a have real personality and character where superficial observations would lead them as being categorised as being 'morons'.

'The man who mistook his wife for a hat' is a superb book, bringing each one of us to a greater understanding as to what is meant by 'being human'.

BILL PALMER

This book describes some very interesting cases; people with brain damage or tumors or simply idiopathic. However, it is presented in a manner that is much too clinical, and sometimes repetitious, to be an enjoyable read.

One important reason for the neglect of the right hemisphere is that syndromes of that half are far less distinct than those of the left. It is impossible for patients with certain right-hemisphere syndromes to know their own problems.

The first case reviewed is 'The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.' At the center is Dr. P., a distinguished musician and teacher. Sometimes Dr. P. would not recognize a student's face, but immediately recognize him/her by their voice. He also saw faces where there were none, and eg. pat the heads of water hydrants and parking meters, seeing them as heads of children. He would also amiably address carved furniture knobs and be astounded when they didn't reply. He had no trace of dementia, but faced those he communicated others with his ears - not his eyes. At the end of his first examination, Dr. P. attempted to lift his wife's head and put it onto his head. She looked as though this was a frequent happening.

A few days later Dr. Sacks visited Dr. P. at his home. Dr. P. originally went to the grandfather clock, with hand outstretched, then corrected himself upon hearing Dr. Sacks' voice.

However, I quickly realized this was not within my area of interest.

On a recent trip to London I picked up a copy of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat before boarding a plane at Heathrow Airport. It is a 2015 paperback just published by Picador Classic (a division of Macmillan) with an introduction by Will Self and an Afterword by Oliver Sacks. The collection of essays it contains was first published in the 1980’s, though some within it were published as early as 1970.

Although I had read some of the contents years ago, I recalled few specifics and very much enjoyed reading it again. Sacks, like many successful popularizers, has not always been highly regarded by the bulk of his fellow neurologists, possibly out of a degree of jealously or resentment. The more prominent reason, however, undoubtedly lies in the fact that he chose a clinical path outside of the mainstream of his profession.

The mainstream has been, and to a large extent continues to be, strictly materialistic and reductionist in approach. It restricts itself to palpable, objective facts and data and eschews unmeasurable abstractions such as consciousness or will. Sacks, on the other hand, concentrated on the problems of individuals who, through illness or accident had suffered brain damage. He followed them, wrote case histories, and through these painted intriguing and colorful verbal portraits. His techniques, as he himself writes, “could not be reduced to surveys or numbers; they required individual, highly personal narratives”.

The fascination and appeal of this collection lies in the uniqueness of the patients Sacks studied and described. His attitude towards them is uniformly kindly and paternalistic. He does not shy away from using words such as “soul” or “spirit” that are shunned by most in his profession. His medical vocabulary frequently includes words requiring the average lay reader to reach for the dictionary.

Also, but quite happily as far as this reader is concerned, the collection includes nomenclature that has come to be regarded as antique or politically incorrect: idiot-savant, moron, simpleton, and the like. Contemporary medicine replaces these words by colorless euphemisms or forgettable jargon. There are people out there somewhere who could be offended, or so the thinking goes. Possibly true. But the rest of us, and most certainly the English language, are the losers.

A catchy title, a fascinating beginning, a mundane middle and a facile ending. The four phrases capture the essence of this book.
A few captivating beginnings are followed by a few sanguine conclusions. The stories embody what it means to be human and present with captivating narrative the essence of human brain, its complexity and its often overlooked functions in everyday life. After a while though, the narrative starts to lose its sheen.
If a reader reads this book under the assumption that it is written for someone with little neurology background, some chapters are too scientific in nature - the author seemed to have lost the genre and drifted into rigorous jargon. For scientific readers, some details are too frivolous and for a reader hoping to be captivated by the lucidity of the stories, certain parts of the book are tentative.
In the end, the captivating title fails to live up to expectations and the reader is left to contemplate whether the author truly intended to write this book or just published a random miscellany of personal notes. Its hard to tell.

A collection of case studies written in a style to “revive the lost tradition” of the stories and personal histories of the patients, which in a way, are as important as the pathology and symptomatology recorded in their charts. As a “romantic scientist”, Dr. Sacks presents cases not just interesting in the presentation of the disorders but also open to philosophical musing of the individual, “the human subject”, making them narratives of their “personhood” and not reductions of their pathologies.

Tonally, the book can seem a bit odd in that stylistically, it is written in the casual way of a personal journal but uses terminology in a manner that presumes former knowledge. Additionally, because of when this was written, word usage, such as “moron” or “idiot” can be a bit jarring. However, it is clear that many of the ideas and humanizing of his patients in his notes and this work helped pave the way for the more positive treatment and conceptualization of neurologically different individuals. Frankly, this book and its similar predecessors that have a more view of patients should be required reading for doctors and medical students alike.

If you’ve ever read Oliver Sacks, you know he is going to be discussing neurological issues and not the run of the mill kind. This book is no exception. I finally have finished this book having owned it for years and kept picking it up and putting it back down. I was curious why I kept doing that and now have my answer.

The book is spotty in how it discusses the various cases. It starts out appealing to the average layperson and sometimes gets dense with reference to other neurological findings or gets deep into the science, but then it weaves out and has more human appeal.
However, as you get to about the 2/3rds mark it gets dense into the references and sciences and stays there for quite some time. Not being a medical person, but only have broad strokes of knowledge it gets harder and harder to read. But, this time I persevered and found light at the end of the denser sections. But, this will not stop me from reading every book Oliver Sacks writes. He is a good writer and brings incredible neurological conditions to the forefront. He also clearly gives credit where credit is due to his oft references to Luria and Hughlings Jackson.

The book is scary when you think of what can go wrong in the human body. Imagine not knowing where your hand is, unless you can see it. Imagine not remembering past 10 minutes and the only solid memories you have are 30 years old...and you look in the mirror and don’t recognize yourself because you have aged so much. These are the more sensational and tragic of things that can go wrong.

I did however wince when I read the older terms of “retardates” and “defectives”. Those were the unfortunate terms at the time. But, that does not say that the author does not treat these individuals with respect. In fact, one of the reason, I continue reading Oliver Sacks books is because he considers the individual, not just the ailment or disease. I found it fascinating that he found people with mental deficits in some areas were sometimes found with significant gains in another (savants).

Oliver Sacks is a really gifted writer, and a compassionate doctor. An all-around good guy who sees the best in some truly bizarre patients. It says a lot about the sort of person Sacks is to handle patients whose lives are completely derailed, and still have so much optimism about the complex beauty of humanity.

My only real complaint is an artifact of how this book was put together (some previously published essays mixed with new ones): it has a really uneven quality. While I'm happy Sacks doesn't coddle the reader, he can't seem to stick to one style -- some essays are fun, witty, and insightful, while others will beat you over the head with medical jargon. Some essays are over as soon as they start, while others overstay their welcome (Sacks is very well-read. So well-read that he'll drop a non-stop series of quotations and allusions to make a point).

But to Sacks' credit, I was never bored. He carefully chose interesting cases, and did his best to handle them with care and not let the book slide into freak show territory. Read this. I can't speak to how up-to-date the science is in the book (it certainly feels a little long-in-the-tooth in a few places), but it's a fascinating psychological study made consumable for everybody.

If you've ever wanted to read up on some of the most interesting psychological abnormalities out there, and you like to read books by well-known psychologists in the field, you won't be disappointed here. This book is an easy read, comprehensive, and interesting.

I'm currently a sophomore in college, and I had to order this book for my Introduction to Psychology as a Major course last semester. Of all the books that I had to read for school that semester, this is the only one I read cover to cover without being told to. I believe that for the course itself, I only had to read about nine of the short stories; but I read every single one of them. I couldn't put it down.

The book is written in simple, easy to read English; unlike a number of other books that you'll most likely need to read for psychology. In fact, I don't even think you need to be studying psychology to buy and enjoy this book. I would recommend this to my friends who have nothing to do with psychology. It's amazingly eye-opening to see so many different conditions that you've never even heard about, or perhaps even think about ones that you've already heard of in a completely new way!

I remember one passage in particular about a man who had Tourette's syndrome; most people would assume that such a condition would have a negative impact on one's life, and that those who have it would want to be rid of it. But this isn't the case in this passage; in fact, the man in question takes medicine to control his Tourette's and feels even worse afterward. He says it erased a part of his personality, and he doesn't feel quite the same without it. This, and other interesting stories lay inside this book.

Not only do I think this book is great for college students or anyone else who wants to read it, but getting it through the store was a pleasure as well. It was nearly half the price of the one my school was trying to sell in the bookstore, and it came with a bonus additional section on the back that the version being sold by my college didn't have. I have the store Prime, so it also shipped very quickly and was there by the time I needed to start reading it for class. Excellent buy, overall.

In The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales, Oliver Sacks again shows us a compassionate, humanistic approach to neuroscience. While he naturally must be interested in the mechanistic part of neuroscience, he never forgets that he is dealing with human beings and finds the sublime in his patients, despite their neurological deficits. That alone makes this book worth reading.

However, having been for a long time fascinated with the human brain and psychology, this was an intriguing look into all sorts of neurological problems and the effects they can have on the way the world is perceived by the affected individual.

One of my favorites was about a man who suffers from prosopagnosia (try saying that three times really fast) which is the inability to recognize faces, including one’s own face, and how he (a music teacher who could never recognize his own students) and his wife dealt with this.

Another was a story about “the twins” who both suffer from autism yet have the uncanny ability (despite the inability to even add, let alone do any other arithmetical function) of being able to tell the asker what the day of the week would be for any date 80,000 years into the future or the past… to say nothing of being able to identity prime numbers up to a 20-digit number.

Yet another was about a man with Tourette’s syndrome (which is not just uncontrollable cussing as so many people think but a large range of impulsive “tics”) who eventually learned to control his Tourette’s during the week (with medication) and then “reverted” on weekends so that he could continue to be the brilliantly impulsive jazz musician given over to the most amazing improvisations on the drums…

This was an enlightening, heart-warming, educational book that I thoroughly enjoyed.

"The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat," is perhaps the best-known and most widely read book by Oliver Sacks. It details many fascinating stories, including the one that gives the book its title. Some are stories of people who have lost certain abilities, such as the ability to recognize anything on the left half of their body as being theirs. And there is the fascinating story of the physically deformed twins with IQ's around sixty who have the amazing ability to calculate consecutive prime numbers of at least six digits in length.

These stories speak of the complexity and intricacy of the human brain, an organ that, despite all we have learned, we are still a long way from understanding. Why, for example, can a stroke or a brain lesion cause one person to lose the ability to understand the meaning of nouns (while leaving the ability to recognize verbs unscathed) while in another person the reverse is true? Why have certain autistic savants developed the ability to calculate the day of the week on which any date past or future will fall, or, in at least one case, to calculate the date of Easter Sunday for any year, past or future? Upon reading this book, one will have a renewed appreciation of the complexity of the brain and the reality that we have a long ways to go before fully knowing how it operates.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is written by Oliver Sacks, a physician and a professor of neurology in NYU School of Medicine. He is known for writing about the history of his patients’ case studies and also about his own neurological disorders and experiences. His book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, is one of the books that he is widely known for. In the book, he writes collections of neurological case studies of his patients. This book is divided into four parts: Part One: Losses, Part Two: Excesses, Part Three: Transports, and Part Four: The World of the Simple, and each section follows a specific conclusion made by Sacks. Through each of his patients’ stories, Dr. Sacks demonstrates new, progressive ways of studying the brain and its abnormalities. He diverges the path that many neurologists take and studies different aspects that are not familiar nor common in the study of neuropsychology. For instance, he stresses that neurologists overlook the abnormalities of the right hemisphere, even though they should be studied in greater detail (Part 1 and 2). He also discusses how having abnormal visions and altered perceptions should be medically diagnosed (Part 3). Dr. Sacks concludes that these areas of neuropsychology should not be neglected because we can learn more about the human brain in addition to abnormal behavior and thinking. From his well-constructed reasoning and conclusions, I also believe that these overlooked areas of neuroscience should be studied more in depth.
In Part One: Losses, he begins by explaining the word deficit, or the loss of specific neurological functions, such as speech, language, or memory. He explains that neurologists are mostly interested and more fond of studying deficits on the left hemisphere of the brain but neglect the right hemisphere because it is more primitive than the left, and neurologists are less interested in direct consciousness, which is what the right hemisphere is mostly in charge of. In his first article of Part One: Losses, he writes about his patient who mistakes his wife for a hat. The patient, named Dr. P, has visual agnosia, in which he cannot interpret visual information, yet he can see clearly with his own eyes. Sacks concludes that Dr. P has both internal and external visual agnosia, which means that his agnosia takes effect in both external stimuli and internal memories and imagination. He finds Dr. P’s case interesting because of his lack of cognitive judgement due to neurological impairment of his right hemisphere. Despite the fact that judgement is essential for survival, classic neuropsychology often avoids studying more about this area because it lacks focus on abstract and mechanical attitude. Sacks emphasizes that it is important to study the neuropsychology behind judging and feeling as well, which is why neurologists should not overlook the functions of the right hemisphere.
In Part Two: Excess, Sacks discusses the importance of studying the excess functions of the right hemisphere. He explains that excesses are interesting to study because, in most cases in neurology, something either works or does not work. However, this is not the case of an excess function. Excess functioning, based on the articles of this section, causes patients to be satisfied and even hyperfunction with a certain condition. For instance, in the article Cupid’s Disease, a patient named Mrs. K refuses to treat her neurosyphilis, stating that her disease has made her more confident and outgoing. Miguel, another patient with neurosyphilis, expresses himself through drawings and demonstrates that he is more imaginative when untreated compared to being treated. Cupid’s Disease specifically made me question the ethical aspect of medicine. Although these patients have a serious condition that can be damaging to them, they refuse to get treatment because the disease themselves make them feel good. Excess functioning, as Sacks points out, needs to be further studied. I agree with his statement because studying excess functioning will help us grasp how these specific conditions should be treated. This will help us to better understand the ethical aspect of medicine (which is a current and global issue) and what we can do to treat the patients as well as have them feel personally satisfied.
As illustrated throughout Part One: Losses and Part Two: Excess, the right hemisphere has an abundance of abnormalities that need to be further studied. Before reading this book, it initially did not cross my mind that the abnormalities of the right hemisphere were not studied enough, but after reading Sack’s emphasis and argument on how it needs to be further studied by neurologists, I agree with Sack’s logic that the right hemisphere does in fact need to be studied in greater detail. In most of his patients’ cases, there is no medical treatment for their condition. Although these conditions of the right hemisphere are uncommon, advancements in medical treatment for its abnormalities will help us to better understand abnormal behavior caused by the brain, and we will undoubtedly learn more about the brain and find more treatments for common brain abnormalities than ever before.
Part Three: Transports discusses the impairment of the temporal lobe and limbic system due to abnormal visions and distorted perceptions. Sacks introduces this section by discussing that imagination, dreams, and memories are not usually thought of as medical conditions, but just like morals and actions, visions and dreams, also referred to as transports or reminiscence by Sacks, characterizes a person as well as determine their mental state. In one of the articles in Part Three: Transports, called A Passage to India, Bhagawhandi, a 19-year-old girl, develops a malignant tumor that later spreads to her temporal lobe. Since then, she has had symptoms of temporal-lobe seizures, such as dreamy states. However, her dreams are more abnormal than usual dreams that derive from temporal-lobe seizures. Her dreams are not fixated; they vary from different landscapes and sceneries. She claims, however, that these dreams illustrate her journey to India and that she is visiting different places in order to arrive home, which explains why she is seeing different visions and sceneries. The more she detaches herself from reality and the stronger her visions become, the closer she is to her home. As she finally ends her journey and reaches her destination to her home, she dies.
I agree with Sacks in which it is important to study imagination, visions, and dreams; his logic is valid and well-constructed. More studies need to be provided for this area of neuropsychology since dreams and visions do actually associate themselves with personal and mental states of a patient. For instance, in cases such as schizophrenia and psychosis, hallucinations can be analyzed further, making us understand the disease and also the unconscious and conscious mind of the patient. These conditions are medical, and there are many other conditions, such as the condition that Bhagawhandi has, that are not medically treated, though it is possible if we continue to study the brain, the science of its functions and abnormalities, and how it directly impacts behavior.
Through his patients’ stories, Dr. Sacks makes his points more valid, convincing, and interesting. It also moves the general audience to learn more about the branches of neuropsychology that are overlooked. By demonstrating novel conclusions about how certain aspects of neuroscience should be studied more thoroughly, such as abnormalities in the right hemisphere or abnormal dreams and imaginations, Sacks builds from the important idea that it is essential to study areas of neuropsychology that are overlooked in order to understand the human brain, medicine and its ethics, behavioral abnormalities, and ourselves.

This book by Oliver Sacks was a collection of a mass majority of clinical cases. Sacks wrote this book as a collection of some of his patients he had encountered with odd disorders. The book title was named after the first patient in the book Sacks shows a different approach to that of traditional psychologists and psychiatrists in the treatment of disorders. He is a neurologist, professor, and author and this book is one of the many he has written. He studied in London, England and began his residency in the United States for neurology. Sacks uses a style of reasoning in this novel and uses both simplistic and medicinal vocabulary. This, therefore, made the reading very easy and can be understood by any reader. I enjoyed the easy read and found the 24 case studies and found them informative and fun to read. Sacks understanding of neurological disorders made the cases not only interesting but also educational for the readers.

Sacks explains his patient’s neurological disorders and divide them into four categories; losses, excesses, transports, and the word of the simple. He introduces the patients on a personal level and also on the neurological level. Cases range from disorders of perception, emotion, language, thought, memory, or action. The case study begins each chapter with a description of the patient and how the disease affects their lives. Following the patient’s description is the postscript which describes the disease and its effects neurologically. The postscript gives a medical terminology yet Sacks also emphasizes the state of mind for the patient. The patients are introduced on the personal level and by their neurocognitive abnormality.

The first section labeled as losses introduces Dr. P, the patient whose case was named after the book. This section has a focus on disorders that have a loss of a neurological function. Dr. P was unable to distinguish faces, however, he was still able to function and continue his daily life with the assistance of music. Dr. P is one of the 9 patients in section one who had suffered from a loss of a neurocognitive ability. Sacks describes neurologist favorite word as deficit indicating a loss and inability of everyday life. No case is identical and losses range from recognition, memory, and more. The diagnoses of each patient in the postscript allow the reader to understand the patient and the complexity of their disorder. This section gave a good start to the novel and gave a variety of patients for the reader. He was able to show that these losses do not make or break the person.

Section two, Excesses, describes disorders that cause uncontrollable tics and grimaces from the body. Sacks exemplified excesses through five cases of people who had excessive amounts of energy or emotions. He was also able to elaborate on how an excess is a hyperplasia or any form of hyper. An example is a patient, Witty Ticcy Ray, who had Tourette’s syndrome who exemplifies a form of excess energy. Ray was described as nearly incapacitated due to the severity of their syndrome. Along with this, he had also quick reactions. Ray was soon able to live his life with fewer interruptions once prescribed the proper amount of medication for his disease. Sacks description of Ray’s condition was described with his disturbances, the effects on the brain, and the form of treatment. His execution of the description of the disease, syndromes, and treatment was very comprehensible for me as a reader.

Section three, Transports, focuses on the state of altered perception and forced reminiscence that relates to a dream or nightmare. This section consists of six forms of transport including undergoing not only psychological changes but also physical changes. Patients undergo transports such as hallucinations, spiritual journeys, visions or dreams. An example of this case was Mrs. O’C who suffered from seizures in her temporal lobe due to a stroke. This condition had led Mrs. O’C to hear Irish music in her head. This then led her to transport to her childhood and recollect forgotten childhood memories. Sacks is able to describe the impact on the brain because of the stroke that occurred. He was also able to connect to the current understanding of neuroscience and provides reasoning for this condition. Sacks also gives the reader a good medical understanding as to why the condition triggers music to be heard in Mrs. O’C head through both psychological and neurological examinations.

Finally, the fourth section, The World of the Simple focuses on the developmentally disabled or abnormal. Sacks introduces four different cases and labels these patients as simple for their neurological limitations. Although they have limitations, Sacks brings out their strengths and how they can still strive in society. Their cognitive process is abnormal and therefore Sacks describes them to have innocent and simple thoughts. One of the stories was a man named Jose who has autism. Jose was mute however he made exceptional art. His detail in his art made up for his disability. Sacks was able to do these cases justice and show the strengths and the abilities of these individuals rather than their disability. Sacks empathized with his patience and understand them. Sacks writes about these individuals and how they have more abilities than society thinks.

Sacks was able to use these case studies to describe the history of the patients and their complex neurological diseases. He had a variety of patients with not only different diseases but also different lives. He was able to use reasoning and I enjoyed this because he dignifies the person and does not define a person by their disease. The different patients represented all were described and very informative. The clinical jargon was incorporated in the postscript and the chapter let us know the patients everyday life. The separation of the sections gave the reader a clear understanding of different forms of diseases. Sacks was able to describe his patients disorders to diagnose them properly. Overall, Sacks was able to portray each case with their lives and disease.

Imagine mistaking your spouse for a hat because you lost the ability to detect faces, or thinking you were still a youthful 19-year-old when in reality, you were a gray-haired 49-year-old. Imagine losing all sense of feeling your body, going through life disembodied and having to monitor your every move in order to function. These scenarios sound preposterous and meant for movies or fiction novels, but in fact, they occurred in real life and were written about in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Dr. Oliver Sacks. This novel is fascinating---we learn of extreme neurological disorders, how Sacks treats them, and the life stories of the patients. Sacks forms special bonds with each patient and describes his patients with endearment. I would recommend this novel but with reservations, because some background knowledge of neuroscience is needed to fully understand the illnesses and treatments the patients experience.
The main idea of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales is to explain Oliver Sacks’s encounters with people who have extreme neurological disorders. The book has 24 chapters divided into 4 parts; each chapter dedicated to a different patient and Sacks’s experience with them. Part 1 of the book focuses on how people view neurological disorders as “deficits,” rather than focusing on what the patient is able to do. The patients Sacks discusses include Dr. P, an extremely talented music teacher who has lost the ability to perceive faces and accidentally mistakes his wife for a hat; Jimmie G with Korsakov’s syndrome, or short term memory loss; Christina, who has lost sense of feeling her own body; Madeline J, who has cerebral palsy and has never used her hands until reaching old age; Mr. MacGregor, who has Parkinson’s disease and walks tilted; and Mrs. S, who cannot understand the concept of “left” due to a stroke.
Part 2 discusses neurological disorders that are considered an excess of something rather than a deficit. Sacks observes several patients with Tourette’s, one in particular is William Thompson, who cannot memorize anything in his recent years and forgets that he is in a hospital. Part 3 explains cases that lead to euphoria. One character that was impactful was Bhagawhandi P, a young Indian girl with a terminal brain tumor. During her seizures, she would see India again and would feel at peace. Bhagawhandi knew her life would end soon and that her soul would be back home in her beautiful country of India. The 4th part of the book focuses on patients with simple lives. Sacks mentions twins, John and Michael, and their gift of mathematics. The twins would bond together by completing difficult math problems. They were later separated because some doctors believed that they should start living normal lives. Here, Sacks’s protectiveness was revealed because he was upset that they lost their mathematical connection---the one thing that brought joy into John and Michael’s lives.
In the last chapter of part 4, we learn about Jose, an autistic child, who was artistically gifted. Jose was in his own world, but to connect with our world, he would draw. Here, we can see Sacks’s sympathy towards those with autism and his stance of incorporating them into the world. He suggests that autistic people have gifts too, and that marginalizing them was wrong. Therefore, since the book was published in 1985, we can assume that the stigma on mental illness has been around for far too long.
Although Sacks’s novel is intriguing and attention grabbing, it is important that the reader has some knowledge of neuroscience and the sensitivity of the nervous system. It is crucial to know that the nervous system takes almost 20 years to fully develop and that damage is permanent. Throughout the book, some of the patients have terminal illnesses but some are treatable. The drug L-Dopa is used to treat Parkinson’s disease, and it is important to know how the drug functions and what Parkinson’s disease is a result of. Brain anatomy is mentioned several times in the book; if the reader has no understanding of anatomy or functions of a certain area, they will not understand why a disease occurs and how it affects the brain and body. Sacks also mentions two ways to test the brain and nervous system: EEG and CT scans. Without knowing the functions of the two, the reader will not understand what they examine and the possible circumstances they are used. This book is not written to educate a general audience, but rather to share experiences with someone who has knowledge of neuroscience.
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales is a wonderfully structured, captivating novel about strange and unimaginable neurological disorders. Sacks beautifully explains his experiences with his patients with love and respect---he left the impression that he was a doctor who was driven, dedicated, and charismatic. His patients truly trusted him and seemed to enjoy his presence. A prime example of this was Jose, the autistic child, who was thrilled every time he saw Dr. Sacks and would communicate with him through his beautiful artistic abilities. The book tends to become dry at times because Sacks goes into depth of what the patients are experiencing and how the disease is usually treated, but that is only because he is using neurological terms. However, not once did Sacks sound disrespectful or demeaning towards his patients; he respected each patient, regardless of what they were experiencing. He did not let his patients’ illness define them--- he focused on what patients could do well, and how great their lives were before they became ill. For example, Mr. P, the man who mistook his wife for a hat, was considered a gifted musician, not an older man with Parkinson’s disease. Sacks focuses on the brightness in the world, rather than the sadness that some of the illnesses lead to. He was well educated and cultured, but had a balance of paternalism for his patients.

Dr. Oliver Sacks is the writer of his best-known collections of neurological case histories, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales. Dr. Sacks was a physician, an author, and a professor of neurology at New York University School of Medicine. He received his graduate degree at the Oxford University Medical School in 1958 and began his internship at Middlesex Hospital. Afterward, he left went to the United States, completed his residency in Neurology at Mt. Zion Hospital in San Francisco, and fellowships in Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of California in Los Angeles. In 1967, Dr. Sacks began writing his experiences with some of his past neurological patients. In his book, Dr. Sacks tells his tales with different neurological patients, ranging from Dr. P believing that is wife is a hat, to Donald having no recollections of his murders. Typically, case studies are focused more on the disease itself rather than the patient that is going through the experience, removing the human element in science. Dr. Sacks delivers the cases of his patients by telling them as tales or stories in order to personify their experience of their struggle to survive with the disease, which is essential in studying neurology and psychology.

Neurology didn’t focus on the relationship between the brain and mind until the early 1860s where Dr. Paul Broca realized that the specific difficulties in the expressive use of speech, or aphasia, resulted from the damaged of a particular region of the left hemisphere, opening up the pathway to cerebral neurology. The specific part of the left hemisphere focused on speech is now called Broca’s area. However, the time focused exclusively on the left hemisphere, being more sophisticated and specialized, while the right hemisphere was ignored. It wasn’t until World War II where neuropsychologists realized that the right hemisphere recognized reality. Classical neurology gave the perception that any brain damage reduces the abstract and categorical attitude to the emotional and concrete. However, in the case of Dr. P., his right brain injury loses his emotional or “human element”, and enhances the abstract and categorical; the complete opposite. This is true when examining Dr. P’s case. His associative agnosia, cannot match an object with a memory, and prosopagnosia, inability to identify familiar people, is connected to his inability to accurately judge the object or face, which is due to damage to both the left and right hemispheres between the temporal lobe and the occipital lobe, where it is in charge of processing information from the ears and the eyes, respectively. Without the understanding of the right hemisphere, neurologists may still be pondering on Dr. P’s “unique case”.

There are two different universes: the physical, where quantitative and formal structure exists, and the phenomenal, where our most complex and ethical considerations thrive. Normally, judging one’s phenomenon by relating it to physiology or neurology is insulting to the individual, for it dehumanized their mental world. Sometimes, however, when an organic disorder exists in the brain that affects their perception of the world, then it becomes necessary to correlate it with neurology and physiology. When there is some gross change in neural function, it is perceived as a ‘transports’, where the development of personal feelings and meaning seem as though it’s psychical. In Donald’s case, his deep epilepsy led to the development of his horrifying recollection of his actions towards his loved ones, when he was under the influence of phencyclidine. This abnormal stimulation in the temporal lobes and limbic system brought forth the memory of the murder in extreme detail as if transporting him to the scene all over again, but conscious and fully aware this time.

These two sections of the book reflect on how any amount of abnormalities in the brain can affect the person’s ability to function in everyday social interactions. How old age can contract a disorder in between the temporal and occipital lobes, processes senses from ears and eyes, that throws you into a world full of abstract objects wouldn’t be understood without understanding the left and right hemispheres of the brain. In addition, the PCP chemical’s later development of deep epilepsy (abnormal electrical activity in the brain) transports you into the most horrifying and traumatic memory in the brain, even though you were never consciously aware of its occurrence. Subtle, small and unaware actions where people have little to no control over the brain activity can lead to some consequential events in the person’s life, from forgetting your own wife’s appearance to committing violent behavior. These cases should encourage more neurologists, physiologists, and neuropsychologists to continue on researching the many different parts of the brain, for there is so much left to learn, about what is in our heads, for the betterment of humankind.

A somewhat interesting and challenging book. Certainly informative.

The first part of each chapter describes psychological and emotional problems Dr. Sacks' patients have to deal with. Their stories are told in a warm, caring manner, worthy of the most kind, compassionate physician one could imagine. The reader feels for these people and senses the doctor's great care and empathy for his patients..

But the second part of each chapter delves into psychological study and theory, perhaps too much so for the average casual reader.

But this much is certain: Dr. Sacks' book offers new insights into and a greater appreciation for problems and neuroses some of our fellow human beings suffer. As Dr. Sacks points out, we can and should do better than we are doing to help these people to become contributing members of society which many of them can do.

The Man Who Mistook

His Wife for a Hat

By Oliver Sacks

Dr. Sacks has compiled a selection of anecdotes from his experience as a neurologist. Previously, he had written (among other things) Awakenings, a short story which was turned into the movie by the same name and starring Robin Williams. From this, I was aware that Dr. Sacks presents stories of neurological disorders in a light, easy-to-understand manner, but at the same time with compassion. He conveys a desire to understand and the desire to help others to understand.

From the title, I expected The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat to present in much the same way. The title suggests humor. I expected to be amused while enlightened about some of the neurological disorders that afflict people.

After more than 20 years of transcribing medical notes for more than a dozen neurologists and psychiatrists all across the United States, I have learned their language. I am familiar with most of the terminology and jargon. Yet, this book, filled with references to theory and studies, and thick with medical language, was difficult and oftentimes impossible to read and/or understand. I think Dr. Sacks targeted the wrong audience. The stories in this book, as written, are more appropriate, in my opinion, for the clinical water cooler.

The title of the book is in reference to one of the stories Dr. Sack talks about, in which a patient of his suffers from prosopagnosia. He isn’t able to recognize his wife’s face and in take mistakes her for a hat.
The book entails different essays from people who have issues with a certain part of their brain. The first and second part of the book deal with stories of people who have deficit issues, while the third and fourth part of the book deal with people who are mentally handicapped. The author, Oliver Wolf Sacks was a famous neurologist. He was born in 1933, with both of this parents being doctors. He got his medical degree from Oxford University. Although he was born in England, he is mostly known in the United States, where most of his work was done. He passed away in 2015 due to cancer. He became famous from writing about his patients disorders, some of these cases were later turned into stage and films. Some of his most famous books include Awakenings and Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. Theses books went on to become movies and part of T.V. shows. The first book he published was titled Migraine, which he himself suffered. It wasn’t until his later years when he decided to focus more on deep aspects of the mind.
The idea that Dr. Sacks wanted to convey through this book was to present a personal view on those who have some sort of neurological disorder. He wanted people to be able to comprehend what was going on in the minds of people with neurosis. Not only did he want to invoke sympathy but empathy as well. He wanted to show the different approaches psychologist and psychiatrists take in treating the disorders.
I thought the book gave a good overall understanding of what it is like for some of the people who suffer from more neurological mental disorders. We are always used to hearing about people who have more common mental illness like anxiety or depression. However this book goes more into depth though stories about people who have less wildly known mental illnesses. People aren’t as educated in what goes on when a part of the brain is damaged. What happens to people when they have a part of their brain damaged is that it can sometimes turn into a psychological disorder. For example if someone has a seizure, that can leave damage behind on the brain. Or even diseases that we know like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s can leave a person with a brain deficit. One of the stories mentioned was about an elder women with Parkinson’s disease, in which when she took her medicine she was in a state of nostalgia where she “traveled back” to when she was a young girl.
The first section of the book is dealing with loss of function in the brain. One of the stories in this section is related to the books title, Dr. P who was a musician had grown to have problems with his vision. It was difficult for him to be able to recognize things around him. Therefore, he mistook his wife for a hat. Many of the other stories deal with people who have trouble with a body part of theirs. There was a story about a man who couldn’t feel his leg. He thought his leg was fake, therefore he would always try to throw it away from his bed causing him to fall too. In the second part of the book deals with people who suffer from excesses, which basically means lack of loss. One of the stories was about Ray, a 24 year old man who had Tourette’s syndrome. He had an excess of energy and motions, because of this it caused him to be good at certain things such as ping pong or playing the drums. When Ray was given medicine to help with his Tourette’s, he began to slow down. Since he didn’t like this change, Ray decided to stop with the medication and just let his Tourette’s be a part of his life. In the third part of the book, it dealt with transports. During this section, it talked about people who had “dreamy states” or reminiscence. In the last section of the book, which had to do with the simple. In others words this chapter focused on the patients who had a simple or transparent state of mind. One of the stories was about a boy names Jose who had autism. Jose was a very talented artist, however when he was 8 he suffered from encephalitis. This caused him to develop dangerous seizures leaving him mute. As he grew up he became frustrated, with the help of new medication he was able to keep his seizures under control. Later he was place in isolation where he was able to practice art as a form of therapy.
Some of the stories in the book dealt with damage to a part of the brain. In the story about the man who mistook his wife for a hat, the damage was done to his central nervous system. His disease was called Prosopagnosia, which causes someone to have difficulty in recognizing people’s faces. Prosopagnosia happens when there is a disruption of never pathways between the vision centers and the emotion center of the brain. Identification happens in the temporal lobe and then the message is sent to the amygdala. The amygdala is responsible for our emotions and memory. In the story about the man who suffered a stroke and was impacted by being mute we see that there was damage to his Broca’s area. The Broca’s are controls speech and helps us control our speech. Although he didn’t suffer damage to his temporal lobe, in which it would have damage his perception as well. The illnesses discussed in the book are mainly mental illness his patients have come across.

Oliver Sacks describes his approach to his patients' as well, including his personal thoughts beyond the case in question. This is where his writing shows very clearly his limitations as a humanist, as an ethical individual. He likes to quote from sources such as philosophy, but his own description of his approach leaves a more sensitive reader speechless in disbelief.
It is a good book for the case descriptions. It is also a good warning on the limitations of medical decision makers. btw, oliver sacks is British, which might explain the particular perception he has of human existence.

The clinical stories written up by Dr. Sacks in this book were both intriguing and emotional. Each tale was a personal story to someone living through a neurological horror. Dr. Sacks was interested not only in his patients' conditions and what could possibly have caused them, but in assuring that his patient could continue to live a life as they were before, or as close as they could.

As this was written by a neurologist, there is a lot of medical jargon - keep a medical dictionary nearby if you don't know all the terminology.

Some of the stories dragged on a bit when history was included, but the background knowledge adds to the atmosphere overall.

One thing that I noticed was that, in many cases, Sacks didn't actually manage to cure his patients. In some cases it took him years to come upon an actual diagnosis. Still, in every case, he endeavoured to make sure that his patient was living as comfortably as they could.

I recommend giving this book a shot - the stories aren't all about neurology and some of the cases are so out there that it's entertaining to even imagine something so ridiculous possibly happening to a person.

A fantastic read for anyone interested in the conditions of the human mind that sometimes just can't be explained.

"The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat," by Oliver Sacks, is perhaps the author's best-known and most widely read book. And with good reason. For it details many fascinating stories, including the one that gives the book its title. (Yes. Due to a brain injury, this man was unable to discern everyday objects and did grasp at his wife's head in an attempt to wear it.) There are stories of people who have lost certain abilities, such as the ability to recognize anything on the left half of their body as being theirs, so that they treat their left hand as a foreign object. And there is the most fascinating story of the physically deformed twins with IQ's around sixty who have the amazing ability to recognize prime numbers and to calculate consecutive primes of at least six digits in length.

While these accounts are fascinating in their own right and written in a nontechnical way that is easy for the layperson to understand, one would miss the overall point if one simply saw them as interesting stories. More importantly, they speak of the complexity and intricacy of the human brain, an organ that, despite all we have learned, we are still a long way from understanding. Why is it, for example, that a stroke or a brain lesion can cause one person to lose his or her ability to understand the meaning of nouns (while leaving the ability to recognize verbs unscathed) and in another person the reverse is true? Why is it that certain autistic savants have developed the ability to calculate the day of the week on which any date in history or in the future will fall, or, in at least one case, to calculate the date of Easter Sunday for any year, past or future? (What makes this last ability so remarkable is that there is no recognized algorithm for this calculation.) One cannot finish reading this book without a profound sense of the complexity of the brain and the reality that, no matter how much our understanding of it has advanced, we have a long, long ways to go before really knowing how it operates.

I read this book right before leaving South Korea for South America, before giving away all of my belongings, selling my restaurant and my home and divorcing my wife and boarding a cargo ship for the three week crossing of the Pacific to Colombia. But I digress.

This is a story of one doctor's dealings with several patients, most of whom have brain disorders that either erase their short term memory, or force them to "see" the world in a different form than that of most of us. It is all very sad, IMHO, but then again that is life.

This novel was quite gripping and it scared the s*** out of me because senility and losing our minds is what many of us have to look forward to. I hope that when it is time for me to go, that I do so with a lucid brain and only good memories. But that is not guaranteed. As the man that I met on the bus in Ecuador said, "Richard, enjoy the moment because happiness does not last forever."

Oliver Sachs was not only a good doctor, but a great writer as well. Rick says definitely check it out.

"With the rise of technological medicine and all its wonders, it is equally important to preserve the personal narrative, to see every patient as a unique being with his own history and strategies for adapting and surviving. The technical terms may evolve and change, the phenomenology of human sickness and health remains fairly constant, and case history, careful and detailed descriptions of individual patients, can never become obsolete."
- Dr. Oliver Sacks, Afterward on
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

Finished reading his book this afternoon. It was a good read. I highly recommend it to those who work in health & medicine and for young students up and coming. I am looking forward to another book of his on my shelf, Musicophila.

I had heard so much about this book over the years, I was surprised at how dull it was when I actually read it. Perhaps my expectations were too high. In any event, I stopped after the fourth or fifth chapter. Yes, it's clinical, but that wasn't the biggest problem: I thought there was a remarkable sameness to the case histories. Although each was a new case, and each a little different, the common thread is that these are histories of people who misperceive the world around them. Interesting and odd, but not fascinating. And, thankfully, very rare.

As a practicing neurologist, Dr. Sacks worked with patients afflicted with, and gifted by, some of the most unusual neurological disorders ever seen in human beings. But this is no dry, scientific, technical description of those patients - quite the opposite! Dr. Sacks writes lyrically, imaginatively, creatively, in ways that help us, the lay reader, understand something of the extraordinary deficits and gifts found in these patients.

Because there is a fair amount of medical terminology, mostly about the anatomy of the human brain and associated illnesses & injuries, it is helpful to have a basic understanding of anatomy, but it certainly isn't necessary.

The human brain is truly an amazing organ, and the mind is even more so. The cases described make you stop and really wonder about just what constitutes our "self." And it's a lot more complicated than we know.

Halfway through the book I'm not sure I'll finish it. Sacks' sentence structure is so convoluted as to make gleaning his meaning impossible in some cases, even after several reads. I recall one sentence that took up nine lines on my Kindle and included almost every punctuation mark on the keyboard.

Individual patient stories are interesting but I learned little from Sacks' diagnoses. The information may be there but it's buried under the tortured construction.

oh what a book! i have no words to describe this incredible book. it is silly to write a review after so many years of its publishing. but i just finished iṭ. i am a caregiver and this book evoked in me such intense feelings of empathy for the patients dealt witḥ. as dr sacks says, it is very difficult for someone who does not know, that a person has a disease. only the sufferer knows the awful burden and the fight that goes along with iṭ. dr sacks has described, in layman terms, neurology and this has made an intense effect on my understanding of the issueṣ. tk u siṛ. if at all a book deserved more than 6 stars this doeṣ. every individual should read this to know what a fellow human being he passes on the street could be enduring, and the level of human harmony would increase beyond belief. i am now determined to read his other books to know these cases betteṛ

The book is about a neurologist and his experiences with clients, what they are going through, and why they reach out to Oliver Sacks. The author breaks the book down into four parts. Each part focuses on a different type of illness or the different type of situation that the client is in, which helps organize the book overall. Oliver Sacks was a neurologist and an author, who focused his career on how the brain works, specifically when working with his patients. Sacks started off his career doing research. However, after realizing that research in neuroscience was not for him, he pursued being a neurologist for a facility dealing with patients who had an illness that left them motionless for long periods of time. This lead to Sacks writing his first book. After that, Sacks focused his career to working in facilities such as nursing homes and a psychiatric center. The book focuses on a series short stories based on the experiences that Oliver Sacks had with his patients. This book is essentially a collection of some of his more intriguing patients/experiences. The book was published in 1985, so it may seem outdated, but the book is innovative, because it presents mental illness in a new and different way. Then, Sacks spent the rest of his career as a professor teaching others about neuroscience through his own knowledge acquired mainly through his experiences. I believe that the book outlines the concepts of neuroscience in a way that the reader understands because Sacks brings these concepts to life in the stories of each patient.
The main concept of the book is to present these ideas and experiences that Sacks’ patients had in a way that helps the everyday reader understand by using common language. He is providing the reader with a more personal side to the mental illnesses that one reads about or learns about. Sacks’ goal in this book is to be able to bring awareness and understanding of these mental illnesses to the public. I think that another goal that Sacks had in mind by making these stories so personal and anecdotal, was to try and remove the stigma that mental illness has to those who cannot associate themselves with people who do have a mental illness. The patients in the book are able to function in everyday life even if it is a little different than others. They have a story aside from their illness and that does not stop them from pursuing their passions.
Sacks divides his book into four parts. In the first part, Sacks talks about the consequences of brain damage and how that can cause losses or impairments in a person’s everyday functionality. For example, the first story is about Dr. P, a talented musician and teacher who had extraordinary visual recognition, but could not recognize faces. He would confuse children with fire hydrants and doorknobs. This was considered a loss, because there is something missing, his sense of visual recognition. He could not recognize faces or not put together in his mind that there was a face in front of him sometimes. The second part is called Excesses and that part focuses on neurological excesses that occur. For example, an excess in energy, movement, and seeing things that may not be there. There is a story about a patient named Ray who has Tourette’s syndrome which causes an excess in energy. This is seen as excess because he is feeling things due to this syndrome that others would not. The third part of the book focuses on transports. There was a patient who, whenever she heard specific music, she would be transported back to her childhood. This concept is focused on the idea of transporting to other memories using dreams, imagination, or other stimuli. This portion of the book is mainly characterized by the transportation one can get from dreams and imagination. The fourth part of the book is called The World of the Simple. This part focuses primarily on patients whose mind works in simpler ways than others. There was one patient who, although was older, had child-like characteristics in which required assistance from others to help complete these simple tasks. The patients described in this part of the book have childlike characteristics and there are tasks that adults perform on a daily basis but they cannot seem to understand or execute these tasks themselves.
The author, Oliver Sacks, presents the book in a way that everyone could understand. Sacks was a very talented physician, neurologist, and professor. I believe this is what lead him to combine all of these into a book that was different than a textbook, but not necessarily a novel. He used his experience as a neurologist to gather all his information, anecdotal evidence, and his own knowledge to form the basis of his book. Then he used what he knew about teaching, learning, and his experience as a professor to teach others about his findings and his daily encounters. Sacks wanted to share this information with others and knew that by writing about his experiences, using everyday language, he would be able to reach a bigger pool of audience. His information is accurate, because these are real cases that happened to his actual patients. He explains everything so well. He doesn’t use terminology that is too formal, or does not use words that might be found in a textbook. On the contrary, Sacks breaks down the information using language and diction an average person would be able to comprehend. He is also very organized with this work. He makes sure to separate the patients in different categories to be able to layout the information clearly for his readers.
Overall, the book is well written. Sacks uses anecdotal evidence that is easy to read and easy to follow. He breaks the book up into four parts so that each concept is clearly identified and that his main point of view for each part is grasped and clearly recognized. One does not need to understand too much about these concepts of neuroscience to be able to follow the book. It is a very enlightening read that teaches the reader the different types of situations, how the patients are viewed by others, how they view themselves, and his own assessment of these patients to give us an overall point of view, so that the story/case is not only one sided. By doing this, Sacks allows the reader to deeper understand each patient because this could easily be a neighbor, a friend, or a colleague who one might see as different or odd, not knowing too much about the person. In a sense, this is also a call to action to not judge people by who they might seem, because there could very likely be living in a completely different circumstance than one might believe. I recommend this book to anyone who might be interested in learning more about neuroscience from an experience neurologist without having to read through a textbook or research and would like to get insight on the brain and its different works and functions.

The title of the book is in reference to one of the stories Dr. Sack talks about, in which a patient of his suffers from prosopagnosia. He isn’t able to recognize his wife’s face and in take mistakes her for a hat.
The book entails different essays from people who have issues with a certain part of their brain. The first and second part of the book deal with stories of people who have deficit issues, while the third and fourth part of the book deal with people who are mentally handicapped. The author, Oliver Wolf Sacks was a famous neurologist. He was born in 1933, with both of this parents being doctors. He got his medical degree from Oxford University. Although he was born in England, he is mostly known in the United States, where most of his work was done. He passed away in 2015 due to cancer. He became famous from writing about his patients disorders, some of these cases were later turned into stage and films. Some of his most famous books include Awakenings and Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. Theses books went on to become movies and part of T.V. shows. The first book he published was titled Migraine, which he himself suffered. It wasn’t until his later years when he decided to focus more on deep aspects of the mind.
The idea that Dr. Sacks wanted to convey through this book was to present a personal view on those who have some sort of neurological disorder. He wanted people to be able to comprehend what was going on in the minds of people with neurosis. Not only did he want to invoke sympathy but empathy as well. He wanted to show the different approaches psychologist and psychiatrists take in treating the disorders.
I thought the book gave a good overall understanding of what it is like for some of the people who suffer from more neurological mental disorders. We are always used to hearing about people who have more common mental illness like anxiety or depression. However this book goes more into depth though stories about people who have less wildly known mental illnesses. People aren’t as educated in what goes on when a part of the brain is damaged. What happens to people when they have a part of their brain damaged is that it can sometimes turn into a psychological disorder. For example if someone has a seizure, that can leave damage behind on the brain. Or even diseases that we know like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s can leave a person with a brain deficit. One of the stories mentioned was about an elder women with Parkinson’s disease, in which when she took her medicine she was in a state of nostalgia where she “traveled back” to when she was a young girl.
The first section of the book is dealing with loss of function in the brain. One of the stories in this section is related to the books title, Dr. P who was a musician had grown to have problems with his vision. It was difficult for him to be able to recognize things around him. Therefore, he mistook his wife for a hat. Many of the other stories deal with people who have trouble with a body part of theirs. There was a story about a man who couldn’t feel his leg. He thought his leg was fake, therefore he would always try to throw it away from his bed causing him to fall too. In the second part of the book deals with people who suffer from excesses, which basically means lack of loss. One of the stories was about Ray, a 24 year old man who had Tourette’s syndrome. He had an excess of energy and motions, because of this it caused him to be good at certain things such as ping pong or playing the drums. When Ray was given medicine to help with his Tourette’s, he began to slow down. Since he didn’t like this change, Ray decided to stop with the medication and just let his Tourette’s be a part of his life. In the third part of the book, it dealt with transports. During this section, it talked about people who had “dreamy states” or reminiscence. In the last section of the book, which had to do with the simple. In others words this chapter focused on the patients who had a simple or transparent state of mind. One of the stories was about a boy names Jose who had autism. Jose was a very talented artist, however when he was 8 he suffered from encephalitis. This caused him to develop dangerous seizures leaving him mute. As he grew up he became frustrated, with the help of new medication he was able to keep his seizures under control. Later he was place in isolation where he was able to practice art as a form of therapy.
Some of the stories in the book dealt with damage to a part of the brain. In the story about the man who mistook his wife for a hat, the damage was done to his central nervous system. His disease was called Prosopagnosia, which causes someone to have difficulty in recognizing people’s faces. Prosopagnosia happens when there is a disruption of never pathways between the vision centers and the emotion center of the brain. Identification happens in the temporal lobe and then the message is sent to the amygdala. The amygdala is responsible for our emotions and memory. In the story about the man who suffered a stroke and was impacted by being mute we see that there was damage to his Broca’s area. The Broca’s are controls speech and helps us control our speech. Although he didn’t suffer damage to his temporal lobe, in which it would have damage his perception as well. The illnesses discussed in the book are mainly mental illness his patients have come across.

I have been intending to read this book for many years and now I have finally got around to doing so. It was worth the wait. Through a series of case histories, the author shows how mental illness - whether congenital or acquired - is very far from the imaginings of ordinary people who have had no personal experience of it. There are people whose whole view of the world is apparently skewed - such as the man of the title who genuinely could not distinguish between his wife and his hat but who still had tremendous musical abilities and knowledge.

Some of those with mental problems actually did not want them treated because they enriched their lives - for example the lady who was suddenly able to recall memories of her childhood which she had never been able to access before. I was also fascinated by the young man who found his sense of smell was heightened to the same level as that of a dog for a few weeks. He said it had added an extra dimension to his life which he missed when it was no longer there.

The book started me thinking about how modern society tries too hard to fit people into the normal range even though the definition of what is normal changes all the time. I was particularly struck by the twins who communicated by means of prime numbers and who could tell what day of the week a random date in eighty thousand years would fall on. They were separated in an attempt to help them to live `normal' lives and in the process they lost their phenomenal ability with numbers.

A case which brought tears to my eyes was the one of the young man who had been brought up in a musical family and had ended up in a home after both his parents were dead. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of opera and a particular love for the whole of the works of Bach. Once he could attend church, sing in the choir and help with music performances his condition improved and he was once more enjoying life and was valued for his extensive knowledge in spite of his sometimes odd behaviour.

If you think you know what mental illness is - read this book.

3.5 stars, round to 4

This was my least favorite of the several Oliver Sacks books which I have read. It was quite evident that it was written fairly early in his career as a writer. He was still finding his voice for mainstream writing (as opposed to writing for professional neurological journals.)

For one thing, there is way too much jargon. Sacks specifically writes for an intelligent audience and still uses some technical language, but now it is within the reach of a reasonably well-educated layperson who is willing to occasionally look up words in a medical dictionary. But The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, copyrighted in 1970, reads like it was written for neurologists and psychologists, and is often incomprehensible to the layperson.

Also, there is a considerable amount of abstract editorializing and/or philosophizing. (In his newer works, Sack focuses more on the symptoms and science of the illness or injury instead, which is far more interesting.) In this book, he even goes so far as to ruminate upon whether a person who has lost his identity and memories - in other words, his "self-hood" - still has a soul. Such passages make for dull reading, and there are plenty of them here.

And the cases presented tend to be more commonplace than in his later books. Apparently, since this was earlier in his neurological career, he hadn't yet encountered very many of the extreme and bizarre cases that make his later books so fascinating. (There are some here, though, such as the one about the identical twins, both with severe mental impairment, who could calculate prime numbers up to the millions.) Probably for this reason, the cases span a wide range of neurological conditions rather than having a specific common theme as in the later books. It's kind of a mishmash - random cases without any cohesiveness.

This was also clearly written before the onset of "Political Correctness," and uses language that many would consider quite offensive and derogatory. The list includes: savages, simpletons, retardees, idiot, moron, and dullard. Yet this is somewhat balanced by his chapter about a young woman with Down's Syndrome (Sacks doesn't name her condition, but one of my nieces has it and I could easily recognize the characteristic symptoms from his descriptions of his patient.) Although he uses terms such as "idiot" in regard to her, his affection and even respect for her comes through loud and clear. Apparently such words were simply considered descriptive or diagnostic at the time, rather than derogatory.

Nevertheless, I don't think that Oliver Sacks is capable of writing a truly boring book. There are some interesting cases and fascinating information about the human brain in The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat. And he has updated the book with additional footnotes and post-scripts. So I would still recommend it, with the caveat that you might want to just skim over the boring parts.

(233 pages)

One might scoff at the thought of a predominantly non-fiction novel leaving readers not on the verge of tears, but in awe at the unfathomable tales written between the pages. That individual has then yet to encounter the literary masterpiece The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by inspirational neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks. Throughout his novel, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, each accounts of the ill patients were written by Sacks to showcase diseases and their psychological and neurological impacts. From the devastating Parkinson’s Disease to the infamous Korsakov’s Syndrome, Sacks jotted each peculiar tick and strange symptom of the victim with the stoic diagnosis of a medical professional. But, Sacks delivered the news in an articulate, humanitarian like manner. The compelling factor of dual author and physician Oliver Sacks was not only that he was an intelligent fellow who studied at renowned institutions worldwide such as Oxford University and the University of California Los Angeles, but that he was a compassionate, yet ordinary neurologist residing in New York who aided mentally disturbed patients rejected from society during his time serving at Beth Abraham Hospital. As he experienced mysterious yet heart-breaking cases of people struggling with numerous mental handicaps to live a ‘normal’ life, Sacks was influenced to write of the raw neurological and psychological torment that he witnessed. This was all pursued with the purpose of exposing the societal stigmas against mental illnesses, many of which shaped the malice given to those individuals, especially during the late 1900’s. Personally, I believe that this novel should be read by aspiring medical students regardless of their concentrations as well as current healthcare workers seeking improvement in their duty as the foundations to maintain life across the world. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat discloses incomprehensible mental pain not from the typical ‘superhero’ personas written in novels, but from realistic perspectives that reveal the frustration of both the individual affected and bystanders as well.
As I had mentioned before, within Dr. Oliver Sack’s novel The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Sacks introduces scientific aspects to the illnesses with various sources used as references to verify what known information existed (during the time in which the book was written) to educate his audience. With the newfound knowledge streaming through the minds of the readers, Sacks emphasizes the suffering of the human life beneath the skin of technical symptoms and neurological factors. Throughout the entirety of the novel, a central theme does not exist nor is there a plot revolving around one specific character and their hardship with a single disorder. Instead, Dr. Sacks intends for an underlying message of humanity to be discovered as a correlation between the starkly contrasting diseases and their stories. From individuals such as Sack’s character Mr. P, who’s sense of vision gradually deteriorated due to an unknown yet disasterous neurodegenerative disease to Sack’s patient Christina’s struggle with a regression in her movement, Sacks unveiled the heartbreaking cruelty against such people. Ironically enough, this mistreatment came from those who supposedly ‘dedicated’ their lives to passing on their expertise onto those desperate for scientific reasoning in regards to their woes (such as the psychologists and nurses mentioned in a handful of studies). This malice was also found throughout unknowingly ignorant civilians. Dr. Sacks displayed the truth behind the harsh treatment and discontent to the disabled patients. The ‘blindness’ to the states of our own brothers and sisters was not explicitly condemned by Sacks, but was explained with the utmost detail without ever addressing the audience, making his technique to writing of the lack of humanity so effective. This allowed for the readers to feel an empowerment to study the diseases and understand for themselves as opposed to being ‘ordered’ to do so. However, even in the midst of such disheartening cases, Dr. Sacks showcased the other side of humanity that gave the feeling of anticipation for a more knowledgeable future. With cases such as Madeleine J.’s, Sacks exposed that even he too felt a pre-existing personal bias when he had first met this patient suffering from not only blindness, but also from the severely crippling illness of Cerebral Palsy. Later, Sack’s revealed a gradual change in his perspective as he pursued the opportunity to help Madeleine to gain sensory perception in her hands once more. In another instance, Dr. Sacks addressed a new crutch to grant patients severely suffering from Parkinson’s Disease peace of mind by introducing the utilization of a medicine, levodopa (L-Dopa). This was a miracle for the realm of neurology as the drug had introduced the concept of balancing neurotransmitter concentrations (more specifically dopamine) to balance the brain chemistry. Overall, the approach to a more humane and informed society was clearly written by Dr. Oliver Sacks within The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.
I whole-heartedly believe that in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, the overall study of neuroscience was represented in a quite interesting demeanor. Although the presence of scientific fact (neurology) was strong, the portrayal of both emotional and mental aspects (psychological) to the diseases were also magnificently embedded into the novel. Pertaining to the knowledge of neurological disorders, the science is confirmed through evidence and data collected by experiments and observations made by Dr. Sacks and other neurologists. For instance, as Sacks explained the concept behind neurological diseases such as Tourette’s Syndrome and Parkinson’s Disease in which dealt with neurotransmitter concentrations and their effects on ‘normal’ functioning. With one disorder (Tourette’s), a lower than average concentration was more suitable as the nervous system could not react properly with the abundance of ‘energy’. All the while, the other illness (Parkinson’s) required more dosages of dopamine in order to allow healthy movement and functioning. Various concepts such as a thorough rundown of the cruciality of our senses (such as vision) and its relationship to the functioning of the human nervous system were also touched upon. Sacks displayed a vast amount of knowledge quite brilliantly by using words and definitions in which could be understood by both a scholar and an average citizen. Sacks wrote for both parties, in two entirely different perspectives. At one moment, Sacks directed the information towards physicians and next to completely unknowing civilians. However, the stance of just treatment and humanity in which Dr. Sacks advocated for was prevalent in both. As mentioned before, Sacks revealed his movement for humanity through the once foreign study of neuroscience with the dream to enlighten mankind on both scientific and moral levels. Although that humanity is not explicitly stated, the beloved author left that for the reader to recognize themselves.
Overall, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat written by Dr. Oliver Sacks not only informed readers of neurological facts relating to interestingly bizarre diseases, but of the societal isolation that those who suffered from these disorders endured. Sacks proved to an unforgiving world that their health was not to be taken for granted.There were moments throughout the novel that humans with mental disabilities were deemed unworthy for the public’s support. Regardless of those few instances, behind a majority of each unique account arose a newfound love and acceptance for the mentally sick; leaving behind a glimmer of hope with each proceeding chapter.

Despite it's sometimes esoteric content, Oliver Sacks' "The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat" is destined to be a timeless classic. It has aged perfectly well and is just as readable now as the day it was published, despite being an anthology of disparate articles that Sacks wrote for varying publications. The afterword of each chapter helps to flesh out the articles into a related and cohesive whole.

While for the psychologist the content might well have dated slightly, with new research in the intervening years, for the vast majority of readers this book will open powerful new insights into such personal questions as "Who am I?", "What is the self?", "How do my thoughts stay so consistent?" and "Am I still me if something goes wrong?"

Sacks is a neurologist and a clinician, and this shows through his writing at times, but generally he writes with such warmth and feeling that his affection and care for his patients is consistently obvious. He comes across as classically educated and well-read, and uses his case studies to explore the human condition more generally, valiantly speculating on questions concerning the definition of humanity, and the spiritual, emotional and transcendental aspects of our lives which are so rarely subject to empirical scrutiny.

Sacks sometimes makes allusions to music, literature and research without much explanation and this can leave a slightly less literate reader like myself floundering a bit, but at the same time it opens new doors into potential classical consumption (what is life really if it's left untested?). Overall, this collection of case studies of wonderful people with the most enlightening afflictions of the mind is one of my all-time favourites. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand themselves.

Reading these stories help us to separate different aspects of our minds, to see that some functions do not have always to go with other functions. For example, in the case of the man who mistook his wife for a hat, the patient can see (poorly), and can feel objects, but has no intuitions for what he sees or feels. When he is given a glove, he describes it just as a container with five pouches, even though he has seen and felt gloves many times in the past. On the other hand, the patient is able to identify the Platonic solids when he examined them. I see an analogy between this case and the general problem of understanding each step in a chain of reasoning but not understanding the overall idea. Understanding the overall idea is about getting an intuition, and does not immediately come after methodically checking each step. Perhaps by understanding dysfunctions like the one of this patient we can better understand the analogous problem in reasoning.

Reading these stories reminded me that our brains are our minds. The brain is not just a container for the mind. I think it is true to say that on a computer, damaging a piece of the hardware typically means that software will not run at all, whereas damaging a piece of our brain typically leads to a particular aspect of our mind changing rather than to our dying. If our brains are our minds, then neurology can contribute to epistemology. I'd like to know what neurology can say about what it means to know something. Can we stimulate a piece of the brain to produce the feeling of knowing something without actually knowing it?

Sacks talks about A. R. Luria often as the most important worker in neuropsychology, and I'd like to read one of Luria's books.

This is an interesting collection of one man's experiences with patients with various neurological disorders. Some of them happen to be quite humorous while others are simply stories of interest to those who are interested in human behaviour. I would love to give it a higher star writing but I felt that some of the editing was below par with a few of the sentences not making complete sense (yes I know I have that problem too but I don't have an editor!). Also sometimes Sacks uses terms which somebody with no previous experience of psychology may struggle to understand without a quick google though I do admit most of the time you can just skim over the term without understanding it as the detail would only be of interest to somebody with an interest in psychology, if you're just reading the collection for some unusual real life stories then you won't really lose anything by just skipping over it, I'd recommend doing the same for some of the explanations of the disorders as again they can be a bit confusing for somebody who hasn't really looked into psychology before though some of Sacks' explanations and theories are really quite interesting.

I probably would not have read this book, except that it was a book club pick. It is a series of case studies by the doctor/neurologist, Oliver Sacks. The patients have a variety of neurological disorders. Some of the stories were pretty interesting; in others I think he went on too long about stuff I wasn't interested in. It was well written and informative, yet entertaining, at the same time. Learning about how the brain works was pretty incredible. In parts, it almost read like fiction - it wasn't dry and too medical at all. I can't wait for the discussion this weekend at book club to see what others thought about it.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Sacks, a British neurologist, is a collection of clinical stories mostly from the 60s and 70s. Each chapter begins with the story of a person to give an example of some interesting clinical findings. These range from the man who could not distinguish faces at all and literally tried to pick his wife's head up as if she was a hat to twins who did not understand the concept of math but could come up with prime numbers 20 digits long to a man who, in his old age, believed it was 1945 and he was 19. The stories are, for the most part, fascinating. Occasionally Sacks went into the minute details of the illnesses and his findings. This often caused my attention to wander. Overall, the book is very interesting for anyone interested in medicine or the way the mind works.

The first time I heard of Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, I was amused that anyone would do that. See his wife and think 'hat'? How silly! I figured when I read the book, I'd find this was a clever play on words. It didn't take long, though--less than a chapter--to find out that this was the world of one man and his psychosis. His brain couldn't collect the pieces picked up by his eyes and put them together sufficiently to determine what was his wife and what was the thing he'd put on his head to keep it dry.

Sacks tells this story, and many other odd illnesses that our fellow humans suffer, with empathy and knowledge but no pity. I like that. He approaches these individuals with an interest in helping them recover a reality they've lost, not with any attitude that they are somehow lessor individuals because their bodies have stopped functioning like those around them. As a writer, I want to 1) include these fascinating oddities into my characters, and 2) share his sense of wonder about what is outside the norm with my readers.

I came away from my time spent with Oliver Sacks and his patients wondering what I've missed when watching others, what goes on in their brains that I can't see and maybe haven't taken the time to understand. Is the human race more different than the same? Now, one book richer in my intellect, I'm quite sure that the slight difference in DNA between us and chimps and other life forms doesn't nearly tell the real story of life and its many forms.

There can be no doubt that Oliver Sacks is a deeply caring physician, a premier neurologist, and a fascinating writer. His books are a joy to read: a celebration of the indomitability of the human psyche (or as some would say, less scientifically, the human spirit). His collections of "case histories" for lay audiences highlight not only his patients' deficiencies but, more to the point, their strengths. As one of his patients reminded members of his profession, "We paid far too much attention to the defects of our patients . . . and far too little to what was intact or preserved."

Keeping this gentle rebuke constantly in mind, Sacks not only determines the hurdles faced by his patients but also charts a path through which they can live full, fulfilling lives. Thus, an "idiot" (so described by a caretaker) becomes a competent artist. A handyman, who has lost his sense of balance, walks upright again with the help of ingenious yet simple devices he designed for himself. A patient with Tourette's learns to live with his symptoms on the weekends (to perform as a jazz drummer) and live without them during the week, with the aid of haldol.

In each chapter, then, is one person's story of frustration (or sometimes of obliviousness) and triumph. As a whole, however (and this is my only complaint about Sacks's books), the "clinical tales" seem disjointed and random. The author organizes them, somewhat arbitrarily, by the vague categories based on the patients' symptoms: neurological loss, excess, visions and hallucinations, and the "simple." (That psychologists and neurologists still classify diseases by their symptoms rather than their causes is surely a reflection on the still-primitive investigations into the workings of the brain. Imagine if your family doctor still grouped an ulcer with e. coli.)

The result of this emphasis on symptoms has the unintentional effect of making patients occasionally seem like curiosities, oddly reminiscent of the "All Creatures Great and Small" series by James Herriot. (This view is only amplified by the book's memorable, sensationalist title.) Yet I'm not sure how Sacks could have prevented this perception and still retained the interest of readers--perhaps by discussing more often and more thoroughly the possible and probable neurological causes of various mental deficiencies, perhaps by arranging his book as a narrative rather than episodically.

In the end, however, this quibble about the book's thematic approach doesn't undermine its value for the reader--and it most certainly doesn't weaken Sacks's reputation as an extraordinarily humane practitioner.

Considering my stereotyped image of a neurologist, i.e., having that strict 'scientific' view of the human being (the mind/brain having solely mechanical processes, devoid of 'soul'; a noticeable unawareness or avoidance of a human's actual 'being', that purely 'clinical' approach to the patient as mere 'subject') was exploded in a thousand pieces after reading this special book. Sacks' general humanity in general and particularly for his patients glimmered bright from every page. As a doctor, researcher and therapist in this field, he communicates quite freely and clearly as to his personal views on his profession and where he would like it to go:
"The patient's essential being is very relevant in the higher reaches of neurology, and in psychology; for here the patient's personhood is essentially involved, and the study of disease and the identity cannot be disjoined. Such disorders, and their depiction and study, indeed entail a new discipline, which we may call the 'neurology of identity', for it deals with the neural foundations of the self, the age-old problem of mind and brain.' (X)
This book is a collection of twenty-four cases, clinical tales about people who, in some cases, have been struck with terrible brain related illnesses during the prime of their lives. The physical, emotional and very foundations of how they function and view the world, has been drastically altered. In the case of 'The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat', Dr. P., a musician of distinction, teacher and accomplished painter, developed a type of visual agnosia or prosopagnosia, where he could not recognize faces and came to see things, people and objects as something else. His entire perceptions of the world had totally changed. One aspect of this particular story that was interesting was Dr. P's paintings, which Sacks observed hanging on the wall of his home. In the beginning the paintings depicted a 'realist' style, almost mirror representations; as the years went by, each painting became more impressionistic, ending in the most recent work being entirely abstract. Sacks made a comment about this fact to the Dr.'s wife, who believed that his artistic style simply matured over the years. However Sacks saw the paintings as representing the progressive nature of the man's condition. I found this case to be at once bizarre, interesting and sad.
Most if not all of the cases in this book are bizarre, interesting and sad, but Dr. Sacks conveys a deep humanity, a scientific concern and a real hope that the profession will find more effective ways in dealing with the brain. He believes the profession should re-think their approaches; perhaps ask different questions, however, most importantly, not forget that, as physicians, they're not dealing with just 'clinical subjects', but human beings with identity. In other words, to truly understand the brain/ mind relation, the essential being, science and the humanities must join forces. One can see from this wonderful book, that Oliver Sacks has already attempted to do just this, with varying degrees of success.
This is a book that drastically changed my views on a lot of things, not least the utter vastness of the mind, and how easily we can lose what we take for granted everyday.

The book feels outdated. The terminology ("the retarded", "the simple") and the tendency to assess actual patients as subjects and science experiments don't feel right in 2017. As noted by other reviewers, the descriptions are highly technical without translation into lay terms. I had been hoping to use this book to make psychology and neuroscience more accessible to and engaging for high school students, but I worry that it will do the opposite.

Having read this book for the first time 7 years ago in college, I recently found myself brousing through it again, and before I knew it I had reread the whole thing. It was even better than the first time. Sacks has added some valuable post scripts since my first reading, but the meat of the book remains the same.
Sacks relays some of his more interesting individual cases with clinical and human detail. The result is a book that is more than just stories of neuropsychological abnormalities. He engages the reader in a philosophical questioning of "What makes a man a man" or more importantly, "What is the essence of the soul". While sacks does not pretend to be a theological expert, he does show the emotional aspects of clients whose cases were thought to be void of emotion in the first place.
Those without a background in psychology will still find this book a moving read. The reader will without a doubt walk away with an appreciation for many aspects of life previously taken for granted. Through his accounts, Sacks gives glimpses of what it would be like to have no memory, no language, no smell, or even no motor skills without intense concentration. Only sacks can make accounts of autism, amnesia, and tourette's this interesting.
The book may lag a little for those with absolutely no background in psychology. There is more than a fare share of medical and psychological jargon. However, Sacks more than makes up for this with his ability to tell a tale. A highly enjoyable book.

A neurologist, Oliver Sacks, discussed and brought to light the neurological disorders in case by case in this book with an interesting choice of the title: "Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat." This is the first book by Sacks that I have read, and I found his writing style to be quite enjoyable.

Not only that, this book contains an extraordinary collection of cases of individuals with neurological disorders that brings one to understand a bit on how human brain works. While this book was first published in the early 1970s and the understanding of the human brain mechanism has changed and increased since then, I found this book to be very insightful.

Out of all the cases I have read from this book, I found the following cases (or stories) to be of great interest to me: "Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," "The Man Who Fell Out of Bed," "Witty Ticcy Ray," "Cupid's disease," and "The Autist Artist."

This book is a fascinating read and deeply recommended.

I've read this book several times now, and own it in both tree and ebook form.

It's fascinating to see how injury or mal-development of the brain can affect people in such wide ranging and such _strange_ ways.

Some of the stories are quite moving - for example the twins who, though in many ways developmentally challenged, had the most extraordinary knack for prime numbers. Their delight in the numbers is almost infectious even through the printed page, which only serves to make their separation all the more painful.

Not only are these stories fascinating, they give the reader much to think about in how our brains work and fail to work. Lots to interest the curious mind.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is the 4th book by renowned British neurologist, psychologist, writer, and amateur chemist, Oliver Sacks. In it, Sacks details, in clinical anecdote style, the cases of many patients he has come across in his years of practice. Various manifestations of conditions such as Korsakov's syndrome, prosopagnosia, alien limb syndrome, autism, proprioception defects, aphasia, Tourette's syndrome, Cupid's disease, "joking disease", epilepsy, amnesia, Parkinsonism, to name a few, are described. While the title may sound amusing, the book certainly isn't; the medical jargon describing the case studies may be dry reading at first, but, if anything, this book is fascinating, often scary and occasionally quite uplifting.

Sacks has written a riveting and somewhat frightening series of case studies about things that, with a little less knowledge, would certainly fit into the supernatural category:
* a man who lost all sense of smell in an accident dreams of being a dog and sniffing flowers, and awakens to find he can smell again;
* an artist slowly loses the ability to distinguish people from objects (the Mr. Magoo syndrome), but his fans think it just makes his artwork better;
* a woman who cannot perceive one side of her body at all, even when presented with a mirror;
* a man whose left and right sides of the brain continually are at war, one hand buttoning him up while the tries to unbutton him.

Sachs provides enough strange-but-true stories to show us just how little we know about the human brain. A must read for anyone who wants the facts behind all those "believe it or not" books and shows.

This was an interesting, in some places astounding, book.Some of the stories toward the end were a little dry, but the majority were amazing and drew me in. My favorite was the autistic artist. The trout he drew, portrayed differently the two times he drew it,especially appealed to me, with it's symbolism and showing of two very different emotions at different stages in his life.

I read this book as part of my psychology course for school, and it is an intriguing (and sometimes mind-boggling) window into the human mind. Oliver Sacks tells the stories of several of his patients, and their strange, and even tragic, conditions. He discusses some of the different things that can cause these sorts of events in the lives of otherwise ordinary human beings. Yet, are they really ordinary? Many people who may not have this or that function of the brain still have strong ability for something. Indeed, Oliver Sacks found that one of his patients, though not "normal", had a very strong imagination.
This and other stories are the sorts of anecdotes you will find in this book. Sacks, through his intelligence and kindness, has managed to help, to his best ability, the patients in this book--and reading this book, you see how hard a job Oliver Sacks has.
This is a good book for anyone interested in psychology, although one must be willing to wade through the more complicated, scientific talk of this book.

If you want to acquire a basic understanding of neurological disorders, "The Man Who Mistook..." is as good a place as any to start. If you are searching for something comedic, keep on moving. Dr. Sacks has written a series of very dense case studies that describe a variety of heart rending conditions. Along the way, he provides some very surprising insights as well.

Oliver Sacks takes us on a visit to various patients with a broad array of neurological diseases. His prose breathes quiet dignity into the actions of even the most bizarre behaviors. From Tourette's syndrome sufferers to those who have lost great chunks of their memory and past, he is unfailingly optimistic and, yes, kind. He almost forces one to abandon harsh judgments about the quality of life of these people and to look at and think about the pleasures and contributions they make.

I think the most touching chapter is when he delineates the lives and problems of those with what is loosely termed limited or drastically small mental abilities. He makes you stop and wonder if, indeed, their lives are not only valuable but also pleasurable and worthwhile.

A very thought provoking book.

In the Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, the author, Oliver Sacks, shares with us some of the strangest quandaries from his neuroscience practice. Yes, the very first story is about a man who did indeed mistake his wife for a hat and the rest of the stories are just as bizarre. The writing is a little wordy and is exhausting at times but overall the actual content of the case histories more than makes up for the pacing because these are real people with real, albeit very rare, disabilities.

The first thing I did after reading this book was to hop back onto the store.con and order "Awakenings" and "An Anthropolgist on Mars." This book was recommended by one of my philosophy professors in college about six years ago. Well, it took me six years to pick it up, and I don't regret the decision. As a complete layperson, my eyes were opened to what a complex piece of machinery the brain is. Sack's personal perspective on these patients disorders is what takes this interesting material and makes it fascinating reading. The only problem I had with this book was that I was disappointed to see most every chapter end. I wanted to know more about most every case. I only rank it 4 instead of 5 for that reason (It could have been more in-depth) and a couple of the cases were simply mildly interesting rather than mind-bending. It's almost imcrompehensible to perceive the world and one's self in the same manner as some of these unfortunate people. I was especially intrigued by one of the questions Sack's brings up concerning the case history discussed in the chapter "The Lost Mariner." A man can remember nothing for more than a few seconds. His entire life, all of his experiences are gone almost as soon as they are past. "He is a man without a past (or future), stuck in a constantly changing, meaningless moment," Sacks writes. Sacks then ponders the question that will stop your heart: "Does he have a soul?" If you have ever been bothered by the question of the spiritual nature of man, Sacks --who stops well short of reaching any theological conclusions -- will disturb you with this material. From that standpoint, he is brilliant at informing by simply forcing the reader to ask questions of his or her self...questions which Sack's himself admits even he has no clue as to the answers. This book could change your perspective on life, or simply entertain you as an interesting novelty. In any case, I very highly recommend it...can't wait to get into "Anthropologist" next.

Many years ago, one of my son's teachers recommended this book when I spoke with her about my gifted son. Oliver Sacks presents his views and knowledge of neurological phenomenons. He explains in a lighthearted way how amazing the human brain is and works through stories of patients and professionals who deal with neurological difficulties. My son's abilities in mathematics, music and linguistics far exceed those of his peers since kindergarten. His Tourette Syndrome has challenged him throughout his life and has proven that his disability is not a handicap but a blessing. This book is worth the read and money,and I highly recommend it.

There is indeed a chasm, a widening gulf between what we learn about the nature of the human mind from physiology textbooks and what we are thought by dramatic personal narratives weaved by Oliver Sacks in his book ` The man who mistook his wife for a hat'. What sort of cerebral organization or disorganization could permit the cases described in this book to happen? What an unimaginably complex puzzle is hidden behind our eyes? Are our rigid Victorian paradigms of cerebral processing mixed with David Marr style computational schemes capable of providing any rational insights into the recesses of the human mind? Can the human spirit be couched in `schematas', `programs', `algorithms' or if you wish neuronal `oscillations'? Aren't we chasing for the last 100 years of the golden age of research the shadows on the walls of Platonian ancient caves? What a magnificent and worrisome book! How shattering and chillingly honest are these narratives..., which brought back my dormant memories from the past, from days working in a psychiatric clinic in a small Siberia town during my medical school years. A well worthwhile book so much so I spent time reading it twice... Thank you Dr. Sacks.

Who ever thought neuropsychology could be enteraining? Sacks book about right-side of the brain cases is absolutely facinating. Reading about these cases makes one think about things in a different light. I'd never really thought about how I know where my feet are at any given moment or what it would be like to have such a disconnect between physical reality and how my brain perceives it.
Sacks shows not only great compassion for the subjects of the book, but also shows the great difficulty in caring for people whose perspective is so fundementally different than the norm.
As a non-psychologist ( I took the one requisite intro psych course in college), I found Sack's explanation of the conditions he encountered clear and as devoid of jargon as he could reasonably make it.

A delightful introduction to the world of neurology, Sack's book covers a wide breadth of topics each with an informative background and emotional zeal uncommon to scientific publications. The reader is given a true sense of the dedication and compassion necessary to understand the patient as a person, and not merely a subject and is given a great amount of detail concerning the impacts on practical life. Dr.Sack's demonstrates a knowledge and compassion that remains untouched by many authors and this work is presented in such a manner that it touches the heart as well as the mind.

One of the most inspiring books on clinical practice and definitely a five star read.

I found this an interesting read although it was a gift from our 3rd year medical school student son. The language is very understandable, and the cases reviewed are extremely interesting. The vagaries of the brain due to injury, disease, abuse, or defect are endless. Dr. Sacks covers all the cases presented completely and in layman's terms. While not a page-turner for me - combat history is more to my liking - the book was an enjoyable diversion.

This is another of my favorite books. I read it over 10 years ago and the individuals in the book still come back to my mind occasionally. This book made me think. For example, the lady in her 80's who started tooking lasciviously at young men again stands in my mind as a paradigm for how our 'settings' influence the way we see things; the same thing may look beautiful one day and blah the next. Or the man with the short term memory loss who was shocked when he looked in the mirror made me ponder on how the faculty of memory is necessary for giving us a sense of self. The book was easy to read and Sacks draws almost schematic representations of these people, but I believe that oversimplification is often necessary in order to make a valid point.

There is a lot to be said about the name of a book. The title is almost like a preview to the rest of the story. Oliver Sacks chose the title, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, because it is an attention grabber. When a person picks up this book he or she will be intrigued by this title and want to know what the rest of the story entails. I know that is what happened when I saw the name of this book. I wanted to know more about the man who thought his wife was a hat. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat is an extremely interesting book that tells the stories of people who have experienced or are experiencing neurological phenomenons. Oliver Sacks tells the stories of people he has met and worked with as a psychologist and a neurologist. He entertains the readers with these stories so much that the audience members will not even realize how much they are learning about science and the brain.
The main idea of this book is to inform and entertain. The audience member is not only learning about different neurological cases, but is pulled in and entertained by the way Oliver Sacks tells his stories. The audience member is not necessarily an expert in psychiatry and neurology. By using language in a way that any person will be able to understand what he is talking about when describing what the patients are going through. The stories are very entertaining, although tragic for some patients, and draw the audience member to want to read more. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat is the perfect book for anyone who is interested in the strange happenings in the brain, but is not well versed in neurology or psychiatry.
The book starts off with a story of a man who literally mistakes his wife for a hat. The man is visiting Oliver Sacks in his office and when going to grab his hat to leave, he grabs his wife's head instead. The man is unable to recognize objects with his eyes. He is only able to see parts of objects. This means he has never seen a single face or whole object in his life. Oliver Sacks cannot fathom why this is happening to the man or what can possibly be wrong with him. The style of the book carries on in the same manner of Oliver Sacks describing incidents in his medical career that he cannot explain, but are very fascinating. This style keeps the reader intrigued and wanting more from Sacks.
Since I am reading this book while taking a neuroscience class, it makes me think about why all of these strange phenomena are happening to these patients that Oliver Sacks is working with. The book brings to light the reality that the brain can do amazing and wonderful things to compensate for what it lacks and what could happen when something goes wrong. In the very first chapter of the book a man who has never been able to see faces or objects as full images is visited. Instead of seeing things, this man went through life experiencing things through sound. It was as if his life was built from a symphony. This goes to show that the brain really is plastic. Plasticity allows this man to be able to function without full sight perception.
Another story in, A Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, that showcases how amazing the brain is the chapter on people who experience phantom limbs. A phantom limb can mean two things. One example of a phantom limb is the feeling that a person still has his or her own limb after it has been amputated. The second example of a phantom limb is the feeling that a persons limb is not his or her own, that it is attached to his or her body but does not belong to him or her. In some cases when people lose limbs and need prosthetic limbs to be able to function again feel as if they still have their real leg attached to their body. It was said in this chapter that people with prosthetic limbs who experience phantom limbs have an easier time working with and living with their prosthetic limbs than people who do not have a phantom limb. They feel like they are walking with their own leg because it does not feel as if they have lost anything. The brain is making up for a loss. What would at first seem to be brain impairment actually ends up being a positive thing.
Some of these stories are almost unbelievable and one may start to wonder how accurate Oliver Sacks' research is. Oliver Sacks is an author that is meant to be trusted. All of his sources are well cited and each chapter is well explained in a postscript at the end of each chapter. Oliver Sacks is a very trusted psychiatrist, neurologist, and author. He has a lot of experience under his belt and knows what he is talking about. Each chapter is very well explained. I do not know much about neuroscience and I understood this book and have learned so much about the brain and the body from reading it.
In the end, I would recommend The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat to anyone who enjoys a good read. With or without a background in scientific studies, this book will grab anyone's attention and keep them flipping pages looking for more. I do not have a large background in science and felt that this book helped me connect information I have learned in class to real life. It is an easy and fun way to learn about neuroscience without having to read a textbook. The brain is an amazing organ and Oliver Sacks is the perfect person to explain what goes on in the brain and how it affects the rest of the body.

Oliver Sacks' "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat" is an incredible and fascinating book--I highly recommend it. The book is divided into a number of stories/clinical tales about various patients Dr. Sacks has seen over the years who have exhibited strange symptoms or ailments due to damage in the right hemisphere of the brain (his summary of the differences between the left and right sections of the brain, and how the disorders of the right half have not been given nearly enough attention by the medical community, is also really interesting). All of the stories caught my attention, but "The Disembodied Lady" was probably the most disturbing. Dr. Sacks is a neurologist who not only knows what he is talking about when it comes to medicine, but he is also deeply committed to his patients and their well-being. He is a humanist in every sense of the word. He is also a great writer--he can explain complicated medical conditions with the greatest of ease and such a sense of compassion. He also wrote the book "Awakenings" on which the movie with Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams is based.

The book feels outdated. The terminology ("the retarded", "the simple") and the tendency to assess actual patients as subjects and science experiments don't feel right in 2017. As noted by other reviewers, the descriptions are highly technical without translation into lay terms. I had been hoping to use this book to make psychology and neuroscience more accessible to and engaging for high school students, but I worry that it will do the opposite.

Having read this book for the first time 7 years ago in college, I recently found myself brousing through it again, and before I knew it I had reread the whole thing. It was even better than the first time. Sacks has added some valuable post scripts since my first reading, but the meat of the book remains the same.
Sacks relays some of his more interesting individual cases with clinical and human detail. The result is a book that is more than just stories of neuropsychological abnormalities. He engages the reader in a philosophical questioning of "What makes a man a man" or more importantly, "What is the essence of the soul". While sacks does not pretend to be a theological expert, he does show the emotional aspects of clients whose cases were thought to be void of emotion in the first place.
Those without a background in psychology will still find this book a moving read. The reader will without a doubt walk away with an appreciation for many aspects of life previously taken for granted. Through his accounts, Sacks gives glimpses of what it would be like to have no memory, no language, no smell, or even no motor skills without intense concentration. Only sacks can make accounts of autism, amnesia, and tourette's this interesting.
The book may lag a little for those with absolutely no background in psychology. There is more than a fare share of medical and psychological jargon. However, Sacks more than makes up for this with his ability to tell a tale. A highly enjoyable book.

A neurologist, Oliver Sacks, discussed and brought to light the neurological disorders in case by case in this book with an interesting choice of the title: "Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat." This is the first book by Sacks that I have read, and I found his writing style to be quite enjoyable.

Not only that, this book contains an extraordinary collection of cases of individuals with neurological disorders that brings one to understand a bit on how human brain works. While this book was first published in the early 1970s and the understanding of the human brain mechanism has changed and increased since then, I found this book to be very insightful.

Out of all the cases I have read from this book, I found the following cases (or stories) to be of great interest to me: "Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," "The Man Who Fell Out of Bed," "Witty Ticcy Ray," "Cupid's disease," and "The Autist Artist."

This book is a fascinating read and deeply recommended.

This is an astonishing book, it chronicles the various, notable, cases treated by Dr. Sacks. People who had deficiencies in perception or over compensation in senses are presented w/ taste and humanity and never reduced to objects. The case studies while clinical are presented in a compassionate narrative that makes it accessible to the lay person. Questions of personal identity always interested me during my philosophy classes and a few of these cases actually provide firm factual bases for the theories postulated. In the chapters he touches on people who become no longer aware of their physical attributes or presence, people who lose their memories after 10 minute spans, making up reality as they go along, and people who suffer amnesia of a type where they are unable to progress beyond a certain date in time, thinking it's the 1940's. Towards the end he touches on autists, those with hyper-abilities with numbers, or art, yet are unable often to talk or express themselves otherwise. I highly recommend this book, and wish it would have been in the curriculum for some of my philosophy of mind classes. I will be reading more of Dr. Sack's works.

I've read this book several times now, and own it in both tree and ebook form.

It's fascinating to see how injury or mal-development of the brain can affect people in such wide ranging and such _strange_ ways.

Some of the stories are quite moving - for example the twins who, though in many ways developmentally challenged, had the most extraordinary knack for prime numbers. Their delight in the numbers is almost infectious even through the printed page, which only serves to make their separation all the more painful.

Not only are these stories fascinating, they give the reader much to think about in how our brains work and fail to work. Lots to interest the curious mind.

The stories were pretty interesting. Some of it was a little too technical and went over my head. It might be more interesting to a doctor or a med student. I think it will give me more incite on how some of the patients, I see at work, work in their minds. One of the stories reminded me of my great grandmother who was schizophrenic. Just a little interesting.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is the 4th book by renowned British neurologist, psychologist, writer, and amateur chemist, Oliver Sacks. In it, Sacks details, in clinical anecdote style, the cases of many patients he has come across in his years of practice. Various manifestations of conditions such as Korsakov's syndrome, prosopagnosia, alien limb syndrome, autism, proprioception defects, aphasia, Tourette's syndrome, Cupid's disease, "joking disease", epilepsy, amnesia, Parkinsonism, to name a few, are described. While the title may sound amusing, the book certainly isn't; the medical jargon describing the case studies may be dry reading at first, but, if anything, this book is fascinating, often scary and occasionally quite uplifting.

Sacks has written a riveting and somewhat frightening series of case studies about things that, with a little less knowledge, would certainly fit into the supernatural category:
* a man who lost all sense of smell in an accident dreams of being a dog and sniffing flowers, and awakens to find he can smell again;
* an artist slowly loses the ability to distinguish people from objects (the Mr. Magoo syndrome), but his fans think it just makes his artwork better;
* a woman who cannot perceive one side of her body at all, even when presented with a mirror;
* a man whose left and right sides of the brain continually are at war, one hand buttoning him up while the tries to unbutton him.

Sachs provides enough strange-but-true stories to show us just how little we know about the human brain. A must read for anyone who wants the facts behind all those "believe it or not" books and shows.

This was an interesting, in some places astounding, book.Some of the stories toward the end were a little dry, but the majority were amazing and drew me in. My favorite was the autistic artist. The trout he drew, portrayed differently the two times he drew it,especially appealed to me, with it's symbolism and showing of two very different emotions at different stages in his life.

I read this book as part of my psychology course for school, and it is an intriguing (and sometimes mind-boggling) window into the human mind. Oliver Sacks tells the stories of several of his patients, and their strange, and even tragic, conditions. He discusses some of the different things that can cause these sorts of events in the lives of otherwise ordinary human beings. Yet, are they really ordinary? Many people who may not have this or that function of the brain still have strong ability for something. Indeed, Oliver Sacks found that one of his patients, though not "normal", had a very strong imagination.
This and other stories are the sorts of anecdotes you will find in this book. Sacks, through his intelligence and kindness, has managed to help, to his best ability, the patients in this book--and reading this book, you see how hard a job Oliver Sacks has.
This is a good book for anyone interested in psychology, although one must be willing to wade through the more complicated, scientific talk of this book.

If you want to acquire a basic understanding of neurological disorders, "The Man Who Mistook..." is as good a place as any to start. If you are searching for something comedic, keep on moving. Dr. Sacks has written a series of very dense case studies that describe a variety of heart rending conditions. Along the way, he provides some very surprising insights as well.

Oliver Sacks takes us on a visit to various patients with a broad array of neurological diseases. His prose breathes quiet dignity into the actions of even the most bizarre behaviors. From Tourette's syndrome sufferers to those who have lost great chunks of their memory and past, he is unfailingly optimistic and, yes, kind. He almost forces one to abandon harsh judgments about the quality of life of these people and to look at and think about the pleasures and contributions they make.

I think the most touching chapter is when he delineates the lives and problems of those with what is loosely termed limited or drastically small mental abilities. He makes you stop and wonder if, indeed, their lives are not only valuable but also pleasurable and worthwhile.

A very thought provoking book.

In the Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, the author, Oliver Sacks, shares with us some of the strangest quandaries from his neuroscience practice. Yes, the very first story is about a man who did indeed mistake his wife for a hat and the rest of the stories are just as bizarre. The writing is a little wordy and is exhausting at times but overall the actual content of the case histories more than makes up for the pacing because these are real people with real, albeit very rare, disabilities.

The first thing I did after reading this book was to hop back onto the store.con and order "Awakenings" and "An Anthropolgist on Mars." This book was recommended by one of my philosophy professors in college about six years ago. Well, it took me six years to pick it up, and I don't regret the decision. As a complete layperson, my eyes were opened to what a complex piece of machinery the brain is. Sack's personal perspective on these patients disorders is what takes this interesting material and makes it fascinating reading. The only problem I had with this book was that I was disappointed to see most every chapter end. I wanted to know more about most every case. I only rank it 4 instead of 5 for that reason (It could have been more in-depth) and a couple of the cases were simply mildly interesting rather than mind-bending. It's almost imcrompehensible to perceive the world and one's self in the same manner as some of these unfortunate people. I was especially intrigued by one of the questions Sack's brings up concerning the case history discussed in the chapter "The Lost Mariner." A man can remember nothing for more than a few seconds. His entire life, all of his experiences are gone almost as soon as they are past. "He is a man without a past (or future), stuck in a constantly changing, meaningless moment," Sacks writes. Sacks then ponders the question that will stop your heart: "Does he have a soul?" If you have ever been bothered by the question of the spiritual nature of man, Sacks --who stops well short of reaching any theological conclusions -- will disturb you with this material. From that standpoint, he is brilliant at informing by simply forcing the reader to ask questions of his or her self...questions which Sack's himself admits even he has no clue as to the answers. This book could change your perspective on life, or simply entertain you as an interesting novelty. In any case, I very highly recommend it...can't wait to get into "Anthropologist" next.

Many years ago, one of my son's teachers recommended this book when I spoke with her about my gifted son. Oliver Sacks presents his views and knowledge of neurological phenomenons. He explains in a lighthearted way how amazing the human brain is and works through stories of patients and professionals who deal with neurological difficulties. My son's abilities in mathematics, music and linguistics far exceed those of his peers since kindergarten. His Tourette Syndrome has challenged him throughout his life and has proven that his disability is not a handicap but a blessing. This book is worth the read and money,and I highly recommend it.

There is indeed a chasm, a widening gulf between what we learn about the nature of the human mind from physiology textbooks and what we are thought by dramatic personal narratives weaved by Oliver Sacks in his book ` The man who mistook his wife for a hat'. What sort of cerebral organization or disorganization could permit the cases described in this book to happen? What an unimaginably complex puzzle is hidden behind our eyes? Are our rigid Victorian paradigms of cerebral processing mixed with David Marr style computational schemes capable of providing any rational insights into the recesses of the human mind? Can the human spirit be couched in `schematas', `programs', `algorithms' or if you wish neuronal `oscillations'? Aren't we chasing for the last 100 years of the golden age of research the shadows on the walls of Platonian ancient caves? What a magnificent and worrisome book! How shattering and chillingly honest are these narratives..., which brought back my dormant memories from the past, from days working in a psychiatric clinic in a small Siberia town during my medical school years. A well worthwhile book so much so I spent time reading it twice... Thank you Dr. Sacks.

Who ever thought neuropsychology could be enteraining? Sacks book about right-side of the brain cases is absolutely facinating. Reading about these cases makes one think about things in a different light. I'd never really thought about how I know where my feet are at any given moment or what it would be like to have such a disconnect between physical reality and how my brain perceives it.
Sacks shows not only great compassion for the subjects of the book, but also shows the great difficulty in caring for people whose perspective is so fundementally different than the norm.
As a non-psychologist ( I took the one requisite intro psych course in college), I found Sack's explanation of the conditions he encountered clear and as devoid of jargon as he could reasonably make it.

A delightful introduction to the world of neurology, Sack's book covers a wide breadth of topics each with an informative background and emotional zeal uncommon to scientific publications. The reader is given a true sense of the dedication and compassion necessary to understand the patient as a person, and not merely a subject and is given a great amount of detail concerning the impacts on practical life. Dr.Sack's demonstrates a knowledge and compassion that remains untouched by many authors and this work is presented in such a manner that it touches the heart as well as the mind.

One of the most inspiring books on clinical practice and definitely a five star read.

I found this an interesting read although it was a gift from our 3rd year medical school student son. The language is very understandable, and the cases reviewed are extremely interesting. The vagaries of the brain due to injury, disease, abuse, or defect are endless. Dr. Sacks covers all the cases presented completely and in layman's terms. While not a page-turner for me - combat history is more to my liking - the book was an enjoyable diversion.

This is another of my favorite books. I read it over 10 years ago and the individuals in the book still come back to my mind occasionally. This book made me think. For example, the lady in her 80's who started tooking lasciviously at young men again stands in my mind as a paradigm for how our 'settings' influence the way we see things; the same thing may look beautiful one day and blah the next. Or the man with the short term memory loss who was shocked when he looked in the mirror made me ponder on how the faculty of memory is necessary for giving us a sense of self. The book was easy to read and Sacks draws almost schematic representations of these people, but I believe that oversimplification is often necessary in order to make a valid point.

There is a lot to be said about the name of a book. The title is almost like a preview to the rest of the story. Oliver Sacks chose the title, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, because it is an attention grabber. When a person picks up this book he or she will be intrigued by this title and want to know what the rest of the story entails. I know that is what happened when I saw the name of this book. I wanted to know more about the man who thought his wife was a hat. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat is an extremely interesting book that tells the stories of people who have experienced or are experiencing neurological phenomenons. Oliver Sacks tells the stories of people he has met and worked with as a psychologist and a neurologist. He entertains the readers with these stories so much that the audience members will not even realize how much they are learning about science and the brain.
The main idea of this book is to inform and entertain. The audience member is not only learning about different neurological cases, but is pulled in and entertained by the way Oliver Sacks tells his stories. The audience member is not necessarily an expert in psychiatry and neurology. By using language in a way that any person will be able to understand what he is talking about when describing what the patients are going through. The stories are very entertaining, although tragic for some patients, and draw the audience member to want to read more. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat is the perfect book for anyone who is interested in the strange happenings in the brain, but is not well versed in neurology or psychiatry.
The book starts off with a story of a man who literally mistakes his wife for a hat. The man is visiting Oliver Sacks in his office and when going to grab his hat to leave, he grabs his wife's head instead. The man is unable to recognize objects with his eyes. He is only able to see parts of objects. This means he has never seen a single face or whole object in his life. Oliver Sacks cannot fathom why this is happening to the man or what can possibly be wrong with him. The style of the book carries on in the same manner of Oliver Sacks describing incidents in his medical career that he cannot explain, but are very fascinating. This style keeps the reader intrigued and wanting more from Sacks.
Since I am reading this book while taking a neuroscience class, it makes me think about why all of these strange phenomena are happening to these patients that Oliver Sacks is working with. The book brings to light the reality that the brain can do amazing and wonderful things to compensate for what it lacks and what could happen when something goes wrong. In the very first chapter of the book a man who has never been able to see faces or objects as full images is visited. Instead of seeing things, this man went through life experiencing things through sound. It was as if his life was built from a symphony. This goes to show that the brain really is plastic. Plasticity allows this man to be able to function without full sight perception.
Another story in, A Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, that showcases how amazing the brain is the chapter on people who experience phantom limbs. A phantom limb can mean two things. One example of a phantom limb is the feeling that a person still has his or her own limb after it has been amputated. The second example of a phantom limb is the feeling that a persons limb is not his or her own, that it is attached to his or her body but does not belong to him or her. In some cases when people lose limbs and need prosthetic limbs to be able to function again feel as if they still have their real leg attached to their body. It was said in this chapter that people with prosthetic limbs who experience phantom limbs have an easier time working with and living with their prosthetic limbs than people who do not have a phantom limb. They feel like they are walking with their own leg because it does not feel as if they have lost anything. The brain is making up for a loss. What would at first seem to be brain impairment actually ends up being a positive thing.
Some of these stories are almost unbelievable and one may start to wonder how accurate Oliver Sacks' research is. Oliver Sacks is an author that is meant to be trusted. All of his sources are well cited and each chapter is well explained in a postscript at the end of each chapter. Oliver Sacks is a very trusted psychiatrist, neurologist, and author. He has a lot of experience under his belt and knows what he is talking about. Each chapter is very well explained. I do not know much about neuroscience and I understood this book and have learned so much about the brain and the body from reading it.
In the end, I would recommend The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat to anyone who enjoys a good read. With or without a background in scientific studies, this book will grab anyone's attention and keep them flipping pages looking for more. I do not have a large background in science and felt that this book helped me connect information I have learned in class to real life. It is an easy and fun way to learn about neuroscience without having to read a textbook. The brain is an amazing organ and Oliver Sacks is the perfect person to explain what goes on in the brain and how it affects the rest of the body.

I'm currently a student in a master's level degree program for occupational therapy at the University of Missouri, and one of my professors recommended that I look at this book to see the "human" side of neurological disorders. It's hard to find any "case studies" that aren't straight clinical reporting on the part of the clinician, but this book shines with empathy and compassion. The reader truly sees that individuals with neurological disturbances are not just diagnosis/es - these individuals are human beings.

This book inspired me to choose to do one of my clinical rotations in a traumatic brain injury rehab hospital, and I now know exactly what I want to do career-wise after I graduate.

The cases in this book were mostly fascinating, but it honestly left me wanting more. Most of the patients were only followed for a short time, which led to a dearth of details. I also wish that there had been more stories in general. But what was there was great.

Sacks’ acclaimed book “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” recounts some of the most fascinating and bizarre clinical neuropsychology tales of our time. From people who have fully lost their memories to those who suffer from uncontrollable tics to those who can no longer identify objects, the reader is immediately drawn into the fantastic and mysterious world of the brain.

Being a psychology student, I have heard nothing but wonderful things about Oliver Sacks from all of my professors—I’ve even read a few excerpts from this book over the years. But I’ve never actually sat down and read the entire thing cover-to-cover. Not only is Sacks brilliant in his words, but he humanizes these patients in an endearing way. So often clinical tales in neuropsychology refer to the patients as mere disorders rather than actual human beings. However, Sacks brings each person in their full to the page, something I found wonderfully refreshing. 4 stars. I will be forever grateful for Oliver Sacks and all that he has done for this field.

I thought I've heard it all after reading Phantoms in the Brain by Ramanchandran and Musicophilia by Sacks. This book was delightful to read and study. Oliver Sacks has become one of my favorite authors and neurology and the body/mind connection has become one of my favorite topics. His readable style without becoming too simplistic is definately his forte (much like Ramanchandran). This is a relatively short book but the cases it contains will give you something to ponder on for a long time. We can really appreaciate the complexity of the human mind/body by reading books like this and it also gives us a good foundation for further study/reflection.

The bad:
At times the author wanders off into philosophical talk. Being more scientifically inclined I would much rather have been spared the Nietzche. Get to the cream.

It's a little outdated. Words like retardate are considered politically incorrect by today`s standards. Try trying to relate to a book that refers to black people as "negroes". It`s time to update your book Dr. Sacks.

The good:

It's hard to find books that introduce the layman to medical cases. For this reason applaud the author.Now I am certain I want to be a neurologist. This stuff is incredibly interesting. The author seems to see the good in people rather than focus on the patient`s limitations. This is a trait missing from many in the medical practice. Probably a really good physician.

If you have not read any of Oliver Sacks' books, this is probably the best place to start. This collection of 24 clinical case histories is written so as to be of interest to both lay and informed readers alike. Without espousing a particular philosophical or metaphysical viewpoint, Sacks' subjects and his commentary force the inquiring reader to ask some of the great, probing questions about our existence. With a perceptive, critical eye for clinical observation and a widely read store of medical knowledge, Sacks writes with true compassion for his patients. Sacks thus shows how both the science and art of medicine should come together in the best tradition of medical practice.

Oliver Sacks, famed neuropsychologist, holds a unique position amongst popular science writers following the film dramatisation of his book Awakenings. 'The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat' reinforces his standing as a brilliant medic and gifted communicator. A balanced approach to the writing makes it accessible to scientist and lay man alike.
The book successfully refrains from clinical coldness but the distinct nature and number cases creates a slightly curt, stop-and-start feel.
I feel that one ought to note that the insight Sacks gives us owes much to things learnt from illness and damage to particular regions of the brain. I appreciate that this may hit a little close to home for those who have a more intimate understanding of such conditions. Sadly, a case study would never do true justice to the patients' personalities, fears and strengths. However, Sacks' tone is never dispassionate and the ingenuity of some of his patients shines through.
All in all, this remains an interesting and somewhat awe-inspiring introduction to the workings of the mind.

This is a book where every twenty minutes or so you will find yourself pausing and looking up just to think about what you just read. It's a book that I think just about anybody would enjoy. It's never boring because Sacks has a great talent for taking complex medical issues and bringing them down to earth in a way that a layperson can understand without struggling.
Also, the book is laid out in vignettes so that just at the point one might find themselves getting bored, he moves on to a new neurological dysfunction. It sounds terrible to say, but in a way, this book is really just a very sophisticated freak-show. But Sacks is no P.T. Barnum. Sacks portrays these anecdotes with great humanity. His thoughts on the subjects of these stories, the disorders and their sufferers, border on the spiritual in magnitude. He explores these issues with such a great awe and respect for the mysteries of physical life, that it feels as if one is walking along with him as tour guide on a journey through the stars.
Just a terrific read and a book that feels great to have on your shelf.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales is a 1985 book of 24 essays about strange but endearing encounters with patients. Even more so than his other novels, Oliver Sacks writes with a warmth and genuine care for his patients, an attitude that has all but disappeared from today's medical literary landscape. Portioned into four themed sections, the essays cover topics of "Losses," "Excesses," "Transports," and "The World of the Simple." Each one of the vignette-ish essays tells of patients afflicted with cognitive or behavioral irregularities and explains how the patient makes sense of the world through a simple, touching narrative. The last essay in the "Losses" section, titled "The President's Speech," recounts language impaired patients critiquing the Commander-in-Chief's oratory abilities, saying, he "does not speak good prose." The book's final section, "The World of the Simple," tells of Martin, a 61 year old Parkinsonian with an unquenchable love for and knowledge of music. Martin's father sang at the Met, and Martin claimed to know over 2,000 operas. In addition to that, he had the all of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians memorized. Sacks marvels at the simplicity of his life partnered with the sophisticated intellectuality of his musical taste. Martin's favorite musician was Bach. Sacks' essays are gracious and compassionate in giving voice to the other, offering a scientific perspective that is uniquely compassionate and entirely welcome.

OK, it does have a funny title but I find this book very interesting and easy to read. It's lyout is one factor of that, for it is divided into tales so you can pick up this book, finish a chapter and pick it up again days later. I am a Psychology minor and therefore I thought it was in my best interest to read it. This book gives us tales of abnormal patients that attain very unusual mental disorders. From an old man who kept kicking himself out of bed to someone who "lost" their left side of the body, this is real world stuff that happends to real world people. If you're interested in Psychology or Abnormal Psychology I really reccomend this book.

Overall, this book was extremely enlightening and insightful. The ethical questions posed are integral to understanding ourselves, our bodies, our minds, others, those who are different from us. The questions asked and the dilemmas that may come up are not easy to solve. Sacks does not offer solutions to most of them, but he does try to make sense of them as much as he can. And on the large part, I love the way that he dealt with the questions at hand. His empathy toward his patients, his interaction with them, and his understanding of what they desire and need, rather than going through a formulaic process was, on the most part, refreshing. Many parts in the novel were moving.
However, there were times where I was rudely shocked into noticing that Sacks uses inappropriate terms to characterize his patients, especially in the last section. I don't know whether it is because of the medical terminology at the time. If not, his comments and assumptions are extremely rude, inappropriate, and frankly speaking, unacceptable. There is a certain condescension that I noticed in the last part, and especially when he is discussing those who are autistic.

The writing style is not very hard to follow but can be a bit dense sometimes. The medical terminology that he uses, to me, was not a problem and I did not mind looking up the definitions of the disorders and illnesses that he named, though to some it might seem more of a chore. One should keep in mind that this is not so much of a layman's read, because all of these stories were actually case studies. He waxes poetic and philosophic which I did not have a problem with most of the time, but I did feel like sometimes he got carried away with the writing. This is not one of those books that can be read in a day. It requires frequent pauses and much thought processing.
As I said, I did enjoy this book very much and I do recommend it to anyone who would be interested in learning more about neurology and how grey the medical world can be. It is not just for medical students or those who are interested in health care, but rather, a book for everyone. Be careful however, of the language that he sometimes employs and take his "empathy" with a grain of salt.

The goals of science were description, explanation, and prediction, and for Oliver Sacks, it was vital to view diseases and personality together to meet those goals. A proficient author, professor, and neurologist, Sacks should have been very informative in his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales, which was published in 1985, but in that book, he was lacking in the aspects of describing and explaining some important links although his humanistic approach to his patients was admirable.
In the book aforementioned, Sacks described the characteristics and experiences of patients with neurological disorders. Every tale was read like a narrative, and Sacks ended each tale with extra discussion about the cases. The book was separated into four sections with an introduction each explaining the categorization.
The first section, which was entitled Losses, composed of nine tales about people who lack certain brain functions. The first tale was about Dr. P who has visual problems. He could not recognize his wife (and mistook her for his hat--hence the title), his face, and even his foot. The second tale was about Jimmie G who thought he was still 19 years old all the time. He had forgotten everything after mid-1940s, and he was exceptional in science and math. The third tale, however, depicted a young woman of 27 named Christina who lost her sense of proprioception, the sense that her body is, for instance, moving even when she is not looking with her eyes. The next tale was of a young man with a similar case as Christina's but had visual distortions of his left leg--which he thought was not his. In the next tale, "Hands," a 60-year-old blind woman did not know how to use her hands (nor even knew she has them) while in "Phantoms," an amputee had recurrent images of his cut-off limb. "On the Level" was about a man who was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and who could not walk straight (but thought he did). Mrs. S in "Eyes Right!" could not tell what is "left" due to the damage in her right cerebral hemisphere. Finally, the "President's Speech" was about patients with aphasia who could tell deception from the president through their sensitivity to non-verbal cues.
The second section, Excesses, was about neurological disorders that cause patients to have elevated moods and behaviors. In "Witty Ticcy Ray," a 24-year-old Ray who has Tourette's syndrome had so much energy and movements. In "The Cupid's Disease," Natasha K. had syphilis many years prior and experienced euphoria, but she refused treatment. In "A Matter of Identity," Mr. Thompson had Korsakov's syndrome and kept on inventing his own world and identity as though to make up for his lost memories. "Yes, Father-Sister" described a former chemist called Mrs. B who referred to Sacks as a father or sister (if not as a doctor). She had trouble distinguishing right and left. Last, in "The Possessed," people with Tourette's syndrome exhibited exaggerations in their imitations of other people.
Transports, the third section, illustrated patients with states that are brought by imaginations, dreams, and other supernatural ideation. In "Reminiscence," Mrs. O'C relived her childhood back in her home country, Ireland. "Incontinent Nostalgia" depicted an old woman with Parkinson's disease since 18 years of age, and taking the drug L-Dopa produced nostalgia to her. "A Passage to India" was about Bhagawhandi, 19 years of age, who suffered from a brain tumor and had dreams and reveries that she was still in India. Then, a 22-year-old medical student in "The Dog Beneath the Skin" dreamt of being a dog and ever since had abilities of a dog. "Murder" told the story of a man who experienced flashbacks of his crime (the murder of his girlfriend) after he took PCP (phenylcyclohexylpiperidine). In "The Visions of Hildegard," an early 11th century woman, Hildegard, had countless flashes of images in her mind which led her to become a very spiritual individual.
Last but not the least, The World of the Simple consisted of tales of simple people with very low IQ (60 or less) yet have very great sense of concreteness unlike most in Losses. The tale of Rebecca showed a 19-year-old young woman who is gifted in theatre arts. She was usually poetic in her descriptions of the world, and immersed in her art, she was far from being retarded. So was Martin A in "A Walking Grove" who has eidetic memory but used it commonly in remembering music. Next tale, "The Twins," was about John and Michael, just past their mid-20s, who were called "calendar calculators" despite both not being able to calculate mathematical equations. Finally, "The Autist Artist" was a 21-year-old man who cannot talk but draw exceptionally.
All of these tales were delightful to read. They brought hope, optimism, and awe coupled with a good style of writing by Sacks. The organization of the sections was neat. However, Sacks' book lacked necessary details that even amateur readers of popular science nonfiction would need to understand the neurological disorders better.
First and foremost, Sacks was not able to explain most brain parts. In the story of Martin A, for example, he mentioned that Martin's cortex was affected, but he did not explain what the cortex was, its functions, and where it is located. In Donald from "Murder," Sacks also mentioned about the former's temporal lobe as being under control during recovery but was not able to give a gist of its importance. In "President's Speech," he was able to distinguish the parts of the temporal lobe where tonal agnosia and aphasia are associated, but no further elaboration of the difference of those parts was presented.
Second, Sacks' explanation of the diseases was seemingly vague or nonexistent. Martin A's meningitis that was said to cause retardation and impulsiveness was not described. John and Michael and Rebecca's degenerative myopia was not given informative emphasis. Syphilis, which caused Natasha's euphoria, had no elucidation of its association with Natasha's elevated mood. The differences between agnosia and aphasia were not entirely laid out and could be confusing. In "The Vision of Hildegard," it was not very clear what may cause the visions.
Third, the drugs Sacks mentioned lack description. Sacks used Haldol to treat Ray, but it did not give absolutely pleasant effects. So did Natasha, who has euphoria. What happened in the molecular level that these drugs bring about? Donald's use of PCP that induced him to commit homicide was not also explicated. How did PCP affect Donald's brain function, especially the seat of aggression, amygdala, and other parts of the nervous system? Did it cause an increase of dopamine or norepinephrine or serotonin? Could it just be simply explained through psychoanalytic theory?
Sacks, however, might not be entirely at fault for the enumerated shortcomings. Great technological advances had since then emerged after the book was published. The pieces he could not explain further might have been due to a lack of research in the time he wrote the tales. But if Sacks had written the book in the present (a time where a myriad of research had given succinct explanations), he might have been able to explain how the blind woman in "Hands" was able to learn to feel and use her hands. Sacks would have been able to describe how, through sensory plasticity, her blindness could be compensated by teaching her how to use her hands. He might have been able to explain how touch might activate her sensory neurons and send messages to her parietal lobe, primary somatosensory area, motor cortex, and motor neurons to grasp an apple or spoon. He might have been able to explain how L-Dopa works in the molecular level to normalize those who have Tourette's syndrome. Additionally, he might have been able to explicate how L-Dopa precipitates the creation of dopamine (if it causes GABA [gamma amino butyric acid, which may inhibit reuptake of dopamine in the presynaptic neuron from the synapse] to increase the concentration of dopamine in the synapse.
He might have also written about the importance of music and how it affects Dr. P or Martin A. He might have been able to gather data as to what kinds of music can help alleviate some symptoms in patients with neurological disorders.
Sacks might have also been able to explain how Haldol slowed down Ray and somewhat depressed Natasha. He might have been able to explain why the basal ganglia might be affected by the lowered level of dopamine in Ray, possibly causing him to slow down or have less excess movements. He could have pointed out how mirror neurons were activated in those with Tourette's syndrome and induced them to imitate passers-by and have some improvisations.
John and Michael and Rebecca's degenerative myopia could have been explained through how eye circuitry works. How light travels only in front of the retina in patients with myopia or nearsightedness could have been stated. How would myopia affect calcium levels, graded potential, and isomerization of retinal? Would far distances cause graded potentials? Were rod cells more active than cone cells? What role do blind spots play?
Jimmie G's anterograde amnesia could have been explained through examination of brain lesion using MRI. The importance of hippocampus for long-term memory and how it could be damaged in anterograde amnesiacs might have been explored too. Was it Korsakov's that caused Jimmie G's amnesia? Could his amnesia be psychogenic? How about those with eidetic memory like Martin A? Was his hippocampus enhanced in a way? Was it larger than usual? Was his corpus callosum enhanced in a way that the sharing of information between hemispheres was exact?
The importance of the senses like proprioception could have been delved further. What parts of the brain were affected in Christina that caused her to lose her sense of proprioception? Was loss of proprioception always due to abdominal pain, and was it really permanent?
Nonetheless, the way Sacks approached his patients' condition was admirable. He interacted with them and tapped their world. He joined John and Michael, the calendar calculators, in their six figures' game. He sounded down-to-earth when he talked to his patients too. When Jimmie G was in his supervision, he kept his composure and spoke as respectfully as he could (knowing that Jimmie could not remember the first time they met and what they shared). Most importantly, he cared to reach out to them.
Sacks narratives, like most of his patients (e.g. Rebecca who concentrated on her strength--theatre), did make up for his deficiencies. His tales provided an overview of neurology, the disorders neurologists like him continuously examine, and the possible treatments (if ever there are). His well-organized book, however, lacked some information for greater comprehension of those not in the scientific field. Still, in the time he wrote the book, not much explanation might have been possible for those neurological disorders that might have prevented him from having weak connections with neuroscience.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

Oliver Sacks is the author of twelve books including Awakenings and Hallucinations
along with being a biologist, neurologist and a professor of neurology at NYU School of
Medicine. In The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Sacks retells some of the fascinating case histories of previous patients who dealt with neurological disorders. This book is split into 24 case studies which are then categorized into Losses, Excesses, Transports, and The World of the Simple parts. The Losses and Excesses focus on neurological functions, the Transports relates to the hallucinations and visions, and then The World of The Simple provides the stories of different forms of mind which is simple and innocent. What makes this read different from others is that Sacks not only describes the neurological impairment of his patients but also how they function with it in their daily lives.

Part one of the book describes the lives of some patients and the deficit or loss of particular brain function which constitutes the general neurological disorders. Sack's also offers the idea that music plays an important role in one's brain. For example, in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, a well known musician Dr. P had issues with visual images and could not recognize items or people. Until hearing someone's voice or by observing the way they moved, was he able to make an educated guess as to who it could be. Despite this large obstacle to lead a normal life, Dr. P was able to complete necessary tasks, such as dressing himself, if he sang undisturbed. By tapping into his musical knowledge, Dr.P was able to carry out normal daily activities of his life. In another selection, The Disembodied Lady, Christina was to undergo a procedure but before that could happen her whole sense of proprioception disappeared. Proprioception is one of the senses the body uses to carry out specific activities and functions. It deals with the body's ability to sense the location of a limb relative to the rest of the body. For example, even though one can close their eyes they can still feel where their arms and legs are. However, Christina had lost this sense and could only realize the position of her limbs if her eyes were actually fixed on them and her words, "to watch them". Despite this setback, Christina was able to carry on with daily activities and being an active part in her children's lives.

Part two of the book describes the excesses and overabundance of activity in the brain and the effects it had on some of his previous patients. Excess activity in the brain is something that is not totally common when it comes to neurological disorders. In Cupid's Disease, a 90 year old woman named Natasha K began feeling more energetic, outgoing and flirty and was concerned that she might have developed syphilis again after having had it 70 years earlier. Despite being right, she denies treatment because of how good and youthful it made her feel. This short story demonstrates that not all believe that disorders are necessarily seen as impairment but rather something that delivers enjoyment and satisfaction.

Part three of the book describes the power of imagination, dreams, and memory and its ability to "transport" an individual. Reminiscence tells the story of two elderly women, Mrs. O'C and Mrs. O'M. Both have experienced hearing songs in their head but loud enough for them to believe that the music came from radios in their home. Both knew the individual songs and specifically Mrs. O'C had childhood memories of her family connected to the Irish folk songs she heard. Structures such as the hippocampus and the amygdale are involved in memory and the perception of music is involved in the temporal lobe. When these structures are out of whack it becomes difficult in knowing and distinguishing between what is reality and imagination. Part four of the book explains the case histories of some of Sacks patients and the simple and completeness forms of mind. In The Autist Artist, attendants believe that their patient, Jose is an "idiot" who cannot perform actions such as talking or telling time. However, Sacks discovers that Jose has a gift of drawing and by making his version of a drawing full of life and interesting to look at than the original picture he copied from. What I really enjoyed from Sack's perception was that he never really required his patients to take medications. Instead he advised his patients to carry on with what they are doing if their disorder provided them a sense of enjoyment. If there was a real issue to his patient's body and cognitive function, he advised that they rely on their other senses such as sight and hearing to aid in their actions.

The varied case histories of Oliver Sacks demonstrate the wide range in which one's brain can function. Despite having a loss or overabundance of activity in the brain, the brain has enough plasticity to maneuver around such constraints and still have the individual still have a sense of control. Each one of Sack's patients showed a perceptual or intellectual issue that impaired them for a time but once it subsided the individual used their other senses to carry out the same activity. Music, drawing, etc had a big role in the recuperation of intellectual and physical function. For this reason, I found this book to be very interesting and insightful. Oliver Sacks uses informal language throughout this book and because of that it was easy to follow and grasp the overall points. However, there are some medical terms that I found confusing. Despite this book being published in 1998, it gives a great look into the mind of a neurologist and the many interesting people he encounters. Since science and technology is always evolving, the year this book was written can be a little off putting because it may be looked at as "dated". However, his stories can still reemerge in today's society and raise the same questions as it did for him.

Oliver Sacks spent his career as a clinical neurologist. Somber, comical, encouraging, dispiriting, outlandish, but always fascinating. These could all describe the patient case histories presented by Sacks in his book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. The author is at the top of his game in medical expertise, yet manages to go far beyond the mere mechanics of neurology and embrace the mysterious humanity of his patients.

Sacks divides his book into four different sections. The first, entitled Losses, deals with neurological deficits. An example of this would be one woman's terrifying loss of proprioception, detailed in the chapter called The Disembodied Lady. Part two of his book explores the opposite spectrum of neurology, Excesses. He starts this section of the book with an interesting look at the pathophysiology of Tourette's Syndrome manifested in one of his patients, nicknamed Witty Ticcy Ray. The third part of the book delves into the strange world of Transports. Transports refers to massive alterations in one's perceptions and inner experiences. One chapter chronicles the experiences of a woman who couldn't escape hearing loud radio-quality Irish music in her head. Many would be tempted to simply write her off as crazy, but Sacks patiently and diligently discovers the neurological culprit behind the unwanted musical renditions. Another fascinating case history in this section of the book is the amphetamine-induced hyperosmia of a young medical student. His weeks-long experience with a "dog's nose" truly makes one wonder about the vibrant everyday realities that often escape our physical senses. The fourth and final part of this book, The World of the Simple, contains four chapters describing the experiences of the mentally retarded. After reading through his interactions with these patients, I'm fairly convinced he dubbed this section The World of the Simple with tongue in cheek. The mentally retarded are far too often dismissed as being bound to a mundane existence. Sacks shatters this misconception as he takes a personal interest in his patients and shows them to be both capable and rich in deep inner experiences. This section focuses primarily on autism.

I believe that one of the biggest catalysts to compassion is knowledge. Without a proper medical diagnosis these patients could have been carelessly relegated to the ranks of the crazy, the inferior, the hopeless, as if such ranks even existed. Point being, dedicated and caring neurologists such as Oliver Sacks are working hard through their writings and their clinical practice to bring us to an understanding of the delicate underpinnings behind our human existence. A humble appreciation of human frailty is key in treating these cases with compassion and understanding. Anyone who reads this work by Oliver sacks will grow leaps and bounds in such understanding.

In this book we are first presented with case stories of patients that more or less convince you that the brain is a kind of mechanical contraption. Strange things happens when parts of this contraption is damaged. These stories of loss are interesting and puts you in awe: What a fantastic thing the brain is!
But there is more. The story about the [twins] left me baffled. With an IQ of 60 they couldn't do simple additions or subtractions. And certainly they couldn't do multiplications or divisions. But nevertheless their brains could somehow master 20 digits primes. Without using any "methods" they could somehow "sense" whether such an enormous number was a prime or not. This twin story alone makes the book worthwhile.
-Simon

I loved this book. It consists of clinical tales by a neurologist. He discusses his patients, always with a concern for their humanity, uniqueness, and quality of life. He waves the philosophical, literate, and aesthetic with the physiological, trying to mete out the underlying wholeness and spirituality of human beings. His concern is not mind/body splits, but the wholeness we find despite all odds against it and the clinical conditions that often limit one's ability to find or recognize our true selves.

If I needed a neurologist, I would want a Doctor like Dr. Sachs.

Sacks was accused by one reviewer of being "The Man Who Mistook His Patients for a Literary Career", and one's reading of this early classic of popular psychology must surely be shot through with a discomforting sense of voyeurism. It's inevitable with any such collection of case studies, but is exacerbated by Sacks' tone, which borders on the cavalier at times. Partly it's a language thing; he seems to relish, just a little too much, reminding us that his subjects are "morons", "freaks" and "simpletons". In 2013, this comes over as insensitive.
This tonal misgiving aside, this is a wonderful collection of case studies about people with brain abnormalities. Why it is so revealing, is because Sacks observes the sufferers as human beings rather than laboratory specimens. With great care and patience and skill, he observes the effects of disorder — and treatment — on the patients' lives, characters and feelings.
There are times when one would like to know, from compassion, a little more about what became of the sufferers; instead Sacks mostly observes and moves on, observes and moves on.
In general — well worth a read, but disappointingly insensitive at times.

THe book is heartbreaking and heartwarming and Saks' unyielding fascination, enthusiasm, and care for his patients shines through in his stories. I think that in some ways we can compare the complexity and vastness of the mind to the unexplored reaches of the galaxy. The fact is that we really are our brain. It is an incredibly interesting subject that Saks explores. He is always striving to get to the heart of what the individual is thinking. We know what the amnesiac is saying in his repeated story, but what else is going on that he doesn't express?

Any one of us are vulnerable to stroke or head injury and we all know or have been exposed to people who have suffered some sort of mental illness or brain damage. There is nothing entertaining about brain injury or deficiency but Saks does indeed write with a sense of wit and humor and this book allows us to relish the unique gifts and differences among those with neurological conditions. Saks himself is a bit of an eccentric which perhaps makes him all the more sympathetic to those whose neurological affects make them stand apart from the rest of society.

Saks relates how some individuals who can't take basic care of themselves and must live in institutions, solve incredibly difficult and complex mathematical equations in milliseconds because it is simplysecond nature to them. Compared to them in that regard, we then are now the mentally disabled.

We might be shocked at the man who mistakes his wife for a hat and wonder not only how and why this can happen but how does the wife live with this person? We may wonder why the doctor with Tourettes who stops ticking during surgeries can't stop the rest of his waking hours. But that is the mystery of the mind and Saks as the Doctor/Detective teaches us so much, and yet leaves us wanting to learn so much more.
Audrey Spilker Hagar, Author
Our Lives Have Gone To The Dogs

I always find Sacks's works well-written and moving. He seems to have the gift of putting himself in the patient's place, never condescending, always accepting.
It's unfortunate perhaps that some reviewers find Sacks 'disrespectful' to the 'mentally ill'. But Sacks's patients aren't mentally ill; they have neurological illnesses. To confuse the two is to grievously insult both the mentally ill *and* the neurologically ill. As a neuro patient I've had my fill of the falsely kind, condescending and ignorant; Sacks is none of the above, and that is why his works are so appealing.

These were very interesting but very clinical. A whole lot of big words and complicated medical jargon. I listened the audiobook and also backtracked in the e-book. I'm not sure which was easier to follow but having them both was easier to comprehend. The human body does some peculiar things.

This is a fascinating look at neurological injuries and illness, and illustrates how little we understand of our neurobiology. As a person living with a neurological injury, I saw traces of myself in some of the case histories. However, the work is highly technical at time and could be daunting for the layperson.

"The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" suggests a theatrical image from Ionesco, or perhaps a brightly illustrated volume shelved next to "If You Give a Moose a Muffin." And yet this book is far from absurdity or fantasy: It describes actual neurological dysfunctions, and the title captures the human dimension of these afflictions -- personal, puzzling, embarrassing, disabling, alienating and, yes, even funny. With his combination of clinical expertise, compassionate insight and comfortable prose, Dr. Oliver Sacks ("Awakenings" and "An Anthropologist on Mars") is the perfect guide to this unusual investigation. On one level his case studies are fascinating glimpses of the complex -- and fragile -- circuitry that must be integrated to produce "normal" brain function, and they illustrate how isolated deficits can have life-transforming impact. But Sacks is more interested in people than in diagnoses, and he introduces us to vivid personalities whose responses and adaptations are often inventive and unpredictable, and whose individual circumstances often evade conventional wisdom. There is the title character, who learns to sing himself through his day after he loses the capability to connect visual imagery with interpretive categories. Sacks sympathetically describes the savant brothers who are perfectly content communicating privately through prime numbers, but who are deprived of joy when therapeutic protocol pushes them into "normal" life. And then there's the man with Tourette's Syndrome for whom the physical and verbal tics are either a burden or a blessing, depending on the day of the week. Every once in awhile a book comes along that becomes a touchstone, a standard source of reference and perspective in daily life, a dependable source of insight and inspiration. "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" may become that for you, as it has for me.

This was the first book I read by Oliver Sacks, and I was absolutely entranced. He has a very kind, compassionate manner (I was a little worried it was going to be a "haha, look at this weirdo" kind of book). As a student of psychology, I was very interested at this look into the neurological world, as to me, they seem to be more interconnected everyday. I'd highly recommend this book to serious enthusiasts of either profession, but it might be a little too clinical for the layperson.

Introduction
The sequence of independent and amazing analyses of disorders poses as a great introduction into what complications are possible in the brain and how the body will respond. Despite providing many similar examples that illustrate the same point, Sacks does a great job portraying his own astonishment at these disorders along with a glimpse of his reasoning behind them. More so, I particularly liked how Sacks' descriptions were simple and clear so that a wide variety of readers other than neuroscientists would be able to relate and follow the stories.

Brief Synopsis
The book is divided into four sections: losses, excesses, transport, and the world of the simple. Each section contains a variety of examples that convey the significance of the section. The first section, losses, starts off by Sacks outlining a brief history of neuroscience and the science behind neurological losses, which is followed by the chapter titled after the book. In this account, Dr. P., a renowned musician with severely impaired vision, has great difficulty recognizing simple objects and is diagnosed with complications within the parietal and occipital lobes. Other stories of losses follow such as accounts about proprioception, phantom limbs, visual complications, and aphasia.
The second section, excesses, describes a variety of cases where patients have enhanced perceptions and on some accounts feel "too well" or "dangerously well" (90). These stories look at Tourette's syndrome syphilis, Korsakov's disease, and schizophrenia. However, different from the first section, a number of these patients feel blessed and "could not imagine life without Tourette's" (98) as they feel "free" and "drunk" (101).
The third section, transport, focuses on patients with reminiscence that have strong and relatively consistently reoccurring memories. Mrs. O'C is somewhat deaf but once had a dream of her childhood in Ireland and from then on had frequently reoccurring Irish songs played in her head at deafening volumes. The rest of the section accounts similar cases of `musical epilepsy' and reminiscence along with an interesting case of an increase in the perception of smell based on a dream.
The fourth section, the world of the simple, recalls accounts of Sacks working with retardates and how these are, based on Luria's experience, "the most moving and interesting of his entire professional career" (173).

Opinion About Book
The book is well divided and an interesting narrative of Oliver Sacks' encounters as a neuroscientist in the 1970s and 1980s. One of the most interesting features of the book is how he decided to explain his observations and how shocked many of the outcomes appeared to him, as was apparent with his style of language and grammar used. For example, nearly every sentence contained several parts, each separated by multiple commas and contained a variety of interesting and exciting adjectives. After reading several recently published novels and articles, the cases he described in 1985 are now more thoroughly explained yet his observations provide a more naive, innocent, wide-eyed perspective into these neurological complications and probably laid down some of the grounds for recent discoveries and knowledge. This perspective allows the reader to better relate and understand the circumstances as Sacks seems to be in a similarly uninformed boat. My favorite example of this style of description is within chapter ten called "Witty Ticcy Ray," where Sacks describes Ray, a man with a slight case of Tourette's syndrome, and how he has come to accept and love his "disorder." Most notably, I enjoyed how Sacks felt shocked on how Ray "could not imagine life without Tourette's" since this disorder was characterized by a sudden burst of energy and a production of nervous tics, jerks, and. Nevertheless, Ray's life was defined by this disorder and gave him a "drunk" feeling that opened his creative side.
Another great story is within chapter two titled `The Lost Mariner," where Jimmie G. had suffered from retro amnesia in 1970 due to excessive drinking and was unable to remember anything after his war days in 1945. I enjoyed how Sacks proved this disorder to the otherwise ignorant Jimmie G. by placing a mirror in front of him and how shocked Jimmie was at this discovery. (However, Jimmie G. forgot all about it within several minutes and went right back to his normal belief as he had severe amnesia.) Jimmie G. was even amazed at his brother's image and how he had aged so much in such a short period of time relative to Jimmie and claimed "some people age more than others." Sacks' skill for writing these narratives in a logical and comprehensive manner from multiple perspectives enhances the stories even further by providing small details that allow the reader to fully understand the problem and diagnosis. It is also very helpful to have the postscripts after most chapters that highlight his main points and also discuss more in detail the significance of such disorders and complications and why they are so important.
Despite being well organized and interesting, I felt the Sacks' writing was a bit choppy and overflowed with commas and punctuation. Very few sentences were easy to read and, in some cases, sentences spanned nearly entire paragraphs, as is apparent on page 151. In addition, since the book was written in 1985 and Sacks is from London, his vocabulary, grammar, and style will seem unorthodox to someone of American origin.

Summary
Overall Sacks produced a very high-quality novel, despite the long-winded sentences and excessive punctuation usage, and provided a very interesting and captivating sequence of stories. His perspectives along with his details of each account make him a reliable narrator. More importantly, he presented cases that are relatively common and provide great insight into how these patients feel and cope with such disabilities and complications. I would recommend this book to anyone looking to learn more about neurological disorders without too much technical language and prior knowledge. It will lay a great foundation of conditions while sparking further interest in the field of neuroscience.

AN INTERESTING COMPILATION OF CASE STUDIES .OF THE BEHAVIORS IN RELATION TO DAMAGE,INTHE DIFFERENT LOBES OF THE BRAIN.. SOME CASES WERE REVIEWED AND TREATED WITH NEWER MEDS.IT IS STARTELING TO READ IN THIS DAY AND AGE THE TERMS "MORON,"AND "RETARD". IT WAS ALSO INTERESTING TO READ, THAT EVEN GETTING HELP THEY NEEDED, OPENED NEW FEARS ,OR, SETBACKS, IN DEALING WITH THAT. DID THESE STUDIES HELP IN DIAGNOSES,TREATMENT,PREVENTION?? DO WE HAVE THE MONIES TO HELP EVERY DAMAGED SOUL , TO REACH THEIR POTENTIAL.. IT DID MAKE ME LOOK UP SOME MATH QUESTONS , AND I FOUND OUT REAL QUICKLY, THAT I AM NOT READY FOR "PRIME TIME"..NANCY

And even then, you have a very good chance of appreciating the amount of insight that Dr. Oliver Sacks has into the minds and lives of his patients, and into life and the human condition in general. Sacks, both the author and the narrator in this book, has chosen some of his favorite, poignant, and exemplary cases from the many patients he has worked with in his home for those with neurological disorders (or, more romantically, a home for those who see the world in a completely different way.). Not only does he describe the disease and condition of the patient, he describes the life, the person, behind the disease. In some cases, he also updates the information he has with the specific patient, i.e., what the patient has gone on to do, or not to do, with their life.

Since this book is a reprint of the original version, a postscript after some of the stories describe similar patients, revelations that he has had, and the medical advances that have been made since the original writing. These also include incredible insight, as well as a sense of hindsight and fondness on the part of Sacks.

As both the writer and the narrator, Sacks exhibits both his impressive clinical knowledge and his personal feelings on each case: it is obvious in reading this book that he cared about and was interested in the well being (or, if well being was impossible, simply the being) of his patients. His writing makes each of these stories, for the most part, assessable to anyone, regardless of their previous knowledge on the subjects of psychology and neurology or attention span: these short stories are comprehendible and, for the most part, concise, and are written in such a way that the reader gets drawn into the story of the patient and feel, at least partially, invested in their health as well, and make you want to keep on reading to find out how, if at all, they were cured or treated.

Whether the story is comic or tragic, whether you want to do a little more general research on neurological disorders, or if you just want to feel lucky that your body and mind work to the capacity that they do, Dr. Sacks' book The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat will keep you both informed and entertained. You don't have to be crazy to read this book, but if you are, I'm sure Dr. Sacks would understand.

My Husband, Tom's, neurologist recommended that I read this book as a means of helping me understand what was happening to Tom's brain. Tom died of Alzheimer's in 1995. This book is not about Alzheimer's but in many ways it gave me more insight than anything else I read. I reasoned that if the brain can manifest the extremes in behaviors and misinterpretations exhibited in the case studies Dr. Sacks highlights then perhaps a brain deteriorating randomly, as it does in Alzheimer's, can also mainifest similar behaviors and misinterpretations. It helped me immesnsely in figuring out what was behind his behaviors and his losses and I dared to allow myself to enter his world and see that world through his eyes. I detail some of these moments of insight in my book, "He Used to be Somebody, A Journey Into Alzheimer's Through the Eyes of a Caregiver," and how this insight translated in his care. (Tom died in our home after a 14 year battle with this disease. If he knew nothing else he knew his was loved. We should all be so lucky.) Dr. Sacks never loses sight of the human being facing the challenges he writes so eloquently of. He has that quality which allows him to see past the symptoms and into the soul of the person. The lesson is that the disease does not define the person. Alzheimer's is no exception. I highly recommend this reading for families and professionals working with this Alzheimer's and other dementia.

This book was assigned text for a neuropsych. class I had during my undergraduate degree. It was by far the best text I've had assigned in any class. This book, along with Ramachandran's, Phantom's in the Brain, was the first time I even considered the Nature side of the Nature/Nurture debate. I will never forget the stories. Learning about these cases with brain disorders left me with such a sense of awe for what the brain can do. Sacks has a wonderful writing style that turns philosophical at the end of each story, so you are left with a lot of food for thought. It is also a great exercise to follow his choices at each step and weight it against what you may have done.

As a graduate student in the field of biology and psychology, I found this to be the perfect blend of both. Although a collection of different case studies in the field of neuropsychology, anyone with even a slight interest in the understanding of the human brain will enjoy this book. Despite a large amount of clinical and science jargon, the book is easy to comprehend. This is a simple book with a straightforward approach of showing normal people what it could be like if they ever had a brain disorder. Dr. Sacks has a great ability in transforming his clinical experiences into something that can be appreciated by the non-clinical individual. He opens up a world that the majority of society would hope to never have to witness in their lives; he is a gatekeeper into a parallel universe. All of these patients physically live in our world but with each different disorder there is another world that can barely be imagined. He is able to capture the "human essence" in every patient even though if we were to see the same patients in a ward or on the street we would never think of them as being similar to you or me. This book is a monument to clinical literature; it is able to emotionally move us and question the happiness we have in our lives. The beauty of Dr. Sacks literature, is that he makes us value and appreciate the small and everyday things in our life.
The book is split up into four sections; each is a different realm of disorders: losses, excesses, transports, and the world of the simple. In the first section of the book, `Losses', Sacks explores deficits, the subject that most think of when told that someone they know has a disorder. In deficits, individuals lose the ability of certain cognitive tasks that we take for granted. Sacks investigates several types of losses; the most prominent of which are agnosias, aphasias, apraxias, and of course amnesia. Each loss affects the individual differently; sometimes they are able to cope and other times the experience is pure horror. The second section of the book addresses excesses. The patients in this section are the "hypers" and generally are in some sort of excited stage. Although alert and on point closer observation finds that it is not a state in which they wish to be . It takes a lot out of a patient to always be "on the go." The third section deals with transports, dreamy states that can occur. These individuals are always reminiscing or remembering a moment in their lives; sometimes it is an unwanted image, sometimes a pleasant memory. For some it has become a blessing but for others a curse. The fourth section identifies the world of the simple, an appropriate title because the patients found in this section all have IQs below sixty. By contemporary standards of society, that would make these individuals mentally retarded. However, Sacks actually learns from each of these patients to look beyond the struggles and obstacles they face. They teach him that the small pleasures of life make one happy such as music, numbers, drawing; and other forms of expression. Sacks learns that not everyone needs to communicate through words.
The structure of this book is quite straightforward; Sacks tells his stories of interesting clinical tales in the field of neuropsychology and writes them in a book that can be read by the non-clinical individuals. I enjoy the set up of each section because he introduces each section explaining the general problem. Each chapter is the story of a patient and how he overcame his disability or what happened to the patient after his meeting with Dr.Sacks.
This book is a great example of the medical community trying to reach out to the everyday reader. Although each actual diagnosis may be complicated for a non-medical reader to understand, each underlying problem is quite easy to comprehend when broken down. That is why Sacks is such a great writer; he gives both sides of the story and he gives the actual medical problem. Then he goes back and explains what the disorder actually disrupts in the patient's brain. He is able to show what everyday functions are lost and why the problem is a nuisance to the individual. I am impressed that Sacks was able to group the disorders in the way that he did. Not only does this book explain the biology behind the problem, but he even goes into the methodology that he uses to diagnosis his patients. Although, he may have the best technology and pharmaceuticals at his beck and call, by simply listening to his patients and understanding their problem he is actually better suited in helping them.
The only thing that I did not like was that he would reference another patient from one of his other books that has a similar disorder. This was a bit confusing because sometimes I would not realize which patient he was talking about. I liked the proportion of the stories to each section. It showed which disorders are more prominent and common within neurological disorders.
I preferred the stories in which Sacks got to really know and understand his patient. There were some stories that were quite short where it mostly just gave a diagnosis and then the patient was never heard of again. I understand that Sacks wanted to give the reader a broad spectrum of different neurological disorders. However, the more personal stories were more heartfelt and showed the pain and frustration of the patient living with the problem.
Also, it would have been more interesting for the reader if Sacks had follow-up appointments with the patients that we knew so well. As a neurologist he had no obligation to do so after the primary diagnosis. But it would be fascinating to see how these individuals are able to live their lives, especially in the case of patients whose lives were greatly affected. I wish that Sacks would have added more stories to the book overall, but that would have been too many stories to compile. In the greater scheme of things there is almost nothing for me to change. This book has fueled my passion for neuropsychology even more. I am grateful for a physician from my projected field of study to write such a wonderful book.
Overall this has been one of the best non-fiction case study books that I have ever read. It is not a complicated read. On the other hand, Sacks purposely tries to write it in such a way that the majority of individuals can just pick it up and read it. Sacks is able to teach his readers the value of everyday cognitive processes. Things that we take for granted such as remembering our family or being able to do things independently are lost for some of these patients. He is able to show us the life struggle that all of his patients must suffer. Sometimes they want to give up but for some reason they keep treading. The book illustrates the emotion and hardship of living in a world that one cannot escape. Many of the patients feel trapped and taken over by their disorders. But with faith and the help of modern medicine many of these patients are able to overcome the disorder and lead a fairly normal life. This is a book of the trials of the human spirit and the amazing power of the brain.
I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the brain and how the mind works or for individuals who are studying in the field of neuroscience or psychology. This is a great find. Although some of the reading may be a bit too clinical or scientific, but the main concept is still easy to obtain; or if you just want an emotional rollercoaster, you should definitely pick up this book.

Although in "The Man..." Oliver Sacks focuses on specific neurological anomalies, in the process of describing how patients deal with their unique problems he presents far more than information about just a disease or a person. He reveals something about our nature as human beings. By exploring the micro levels of deficits, he shows us the macro dimensions of positive physical resources we either didn't know about or just tend to take for granted. Sacks is a thinking person's storyteller. His curiosity, intellectual humility, and keen diagnostic insight join together to bring him and the reader to truly redemptive discoveries about the resilience and transcendence of the brain and nervous system(s). What a book! You can't just read it; you are compelled to ponder it and live it.

After reading this book I have become a big fan of Dr Oliver Sacks. Hats off to him for showing such a remarkable involvement and empathy in his patients.

This book is about people who suffer from neurological deficiencies, who are considered not normal by people like us. It has three sections: 'Losses', 'Excesses' and 'The world of simple'. The strange title comes from a story where a fine gentleman, a distinguished musician has difficulty seeing faces or scenes as a whole. Read on to see how he mistook his wife.... There are eight other narratives in this section. People touched upon here have lost use of some essential faculty, so the title 'Losses'. And read on, one can even lose the sense of ones body and may feel that the legs or the feet are not there unless one actually sees it! Scary to say the least!

In the second section people may have too much of some faculty, but can that ever be a problem? You bet it can be. There is a lady in her late eighties starts behaving out of character, almost like a teen-ager and then she knew something is wrong. Ten more ways to get victim of excesses, ten more fascinating

Finally there is the world of simple who may actually be geniuses at certain activities like numbers or drawing (Remember `Trainman' an Oscar winning movie where a simple person was a mathematical genius? There are two real people who are as brilliant). And around this with the expert care they can build satisfying lives.

Though the whole book talks about people who are in some sense not normal as we define it but they are beautiful people with enriching lives. This great doctor has brought it out so well in this book that I plan to read all the books.

Decades after its original publication, Dr. Sacks' bestseller remains a fascinating exploration of neurologic disease. I assign readings from this wonderful book in my graduate neuroanatomy class to provide clinical perspective to the study of the anatomy and function of the nervous system. Although written in clear, straightforward language (you do NOT need to be studying neuroanatomy to understand this book!), Dr. Sacks' tales do not sacrifice accuracy and detail for entertainment; he does the reader the rare courtesy of assuming that the fascinating world of the nervous system is well within the grasp of everyone. I confess that I enjoy The Man Who Mistook His Wife more than most of Dr. Sacks' subsequent books. The vignettes are brief, and the reader can read in short bursts without losing the narrative thread. Dr. Sacks also provides a bibliography, a fabulous resource for readers who would like to satisfy further the curiosity that Dr. Sacks' tales are sure to inspire.

Here is a great and humanizing collection of true 'clinical tales' told by Dr. Sacks. The various case studies exhibit the often startling conditions that can arise from unusual brain (dis)function. Each chapter contains a short story of Sacks' interaction with a particular person and their unusual condition as well as Sacks' own sometimes self-indulgent, but almost always insightful discussion of the deeper meaning, profound details, and inspiration one can discover through the person's (often tragic) situation. I found the examples of agnosia (inability to interpret stimuli), and also loss of proprioception (sense of one's own body) to be particularly fascinating.

Reading this book, I felt like touring a museum of curiosities, getting an overview of a large number of clinical case, without any in-depth analysis or understanding of the patients. Overall, the book felt cold and detached and I found myself wanting to know more about each person described, on their personality. They felt too much like lab experiments instead of human beings. However, the scientific aspects seemed well researched, solid and à-propos.
I recommend Sacks'"An Anthropologist on Mars" as a better read, for more in-depth studies of fewer cases.

This book is incredibly well written and easy to follow along with being very informative in a compassionate manner.
The format is logical and keeps the reader interested. There are four parts: the first Losses, the second Excesses, the third Transports and the fourth the World of the Simple. Each section contains stories of Dr. Sacks' clients that broaden the understanding, appreciation and knowledge of our senses.
Oliver Sacks wonderfully touches the emotional core of the reader with his clients' stories. This book opens the door to a subject not often publicized. All of Dr. Sacks' patients have one thing in common-each has lost or never had a particular sense which disables him from functioning in what we consider normal reality. This book illustrates the struggles and worries of these patients and the doctors who treat them.
Not only does Dr. Sacks create vivid images of the patients' "deficits", but he conveys the second problem of treating a psychological disorder. After a "dysfunction" is identified and a treatment determined, the patient and the doctor must decide whether or not to proceed. Often this "dysfunction" is not a disturbance to the patient . If the treatment will completely free him of it, the patient feels as though a part of him is lost and might not want the treatment at all.
Reading this book is an enriching experience and gives great perspective of both the clients of the psychological world and those who treat them. Oliver Sacks obviously cares for each of his patients. And if nothing else, this book will make your heart smile.

I really did try to read the book but most of the chapters are missing two or more pages. The missing pages display a blank page. I gave up trying to read since I could never read the chapters in their entirety....