Oliver Sacks "The man who mistook his wife for a hat".

Author: Oliver Sacks Original title: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat Genre: popular science Medical subject: neurology, neuropsychology Year of first publication: 1985 (worldwide), 1994 (Poland) Description: Oliver Sacks has mastered the art of writing about medicine in a way that is accessible to everyone, yet at the same time full of profound reflections; he does not hesitate to compare the conditions of his individual patients to the visions of life outlined by great philosophers, seeking connections between illness and the archetypes present in our consciousness. The book opens with a quote from William Osler: “The story of disease is a kind of Tale from One Thousand and One Nights”—and indeed, the life stories (not just the illnesses!) of the English neurologist and psychiatrist’s successive patients read like fairy tales, as he delves into their experiences and emotions, striving to understand the immense devastation—which cannot be fully examined—that the loss of nervous system function has wrought upon them. Here we learn the story of the titular man, an intelligent music academy lecturer whose wife has grown accustomed to her husband occasionally grabbing her by the head when he intends to put on his hat; we read further about a former sailor who is left only to drift in memories of the past, having lost the ability to remember new information. We sympathize with a woman who, despite having a fully intact body, cannot feel it and is not even entirely convinced that she possesses one; we learn that there can be good and bad phantoms, as well as many other fascinating facts from the field of neuropsychology, the existence of which, even while studying medicine, we were previously unaware of.