Book

Sacks, Oliver, 1933-2015.

The man who mistook his wife for a hat : and other clinical tales / Oliver Sacks.

First Touchstone edition.

New York, NY : Simon & Schuster, 1998.

x, 243 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

In his most extraordinary book, "one of the great clinical writers of the 20th century" (The New York Times) recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders. Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents. If inconceivably strange, these brilliant tales remain, in Dr. Sacks's splendid and sympathetic telling, deeply human. They are studies of life struggling against incredible adversity, and they enable us to enter the world of the neurologically impaired, to imagine with our hearts what it must be to live and feel as they do. A great healer, Sacks never loses sight of medicine's ultimate responsibility: "the suffering, afflicted, fighting human subject."

pt. 1. Losses. The man who mistook his wife for a hat -- The lost mariner -- The disembodied lady -- The man who fell out of bed -- Hands -- Phantoms -- On the level -- Eyes right! -- The president's speech -- pt. 2. Excesses. Witty ticcy Ray -- Cupid's disease -- A matter of identity -- Yes, father-sister -- The possessed -- pt. 3. Transports. Reminiscence -- Incontinent nostalgia -- A passage to India -- The dog beneath the skin -- Murder -- The visions of Hildegard -- pt. 4. The world of the simple. Rebecca -- A walking grove -- The twins -- The autist artist.

"A Touchstone book."

Includes bibliographical references (pages 234-243).

Neurology -- Anecdotes.

Psychology, Pathological.

Anecdotes.

Table of contents

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description

98004723

0684853949

9780684853949

1439503052

9781439503058

38311664

3

0

392144