Awakenings
by Oliver Sacks
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Book Summary Information
Author: Oliver SacksEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-10-05
ISBN: 0375704051
Number of pages: 464
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Awakenings
Book Review: Most of the people who bought this 5 Stars
....probably threw it away without finishing the first page. And that's sad, because it's a fine book, 95% of which can be understood by any intelligent person willing to work at it. I bought this in a bookstore shortly after seeing the movie...it was sold in a very nice display, meant to capitalize on the movie. This I consider to have been improper [NOT illegal; this is America] marketing; within the first paragraph, Dr. Sacks is talking about the difference between upper and lower motor neuron lesions [THAT brought back memories], infinite motion, infinite rigidity...99+% of the poor folks who wasted their money were blown away. The rest of us were hooked by a fabulous book.Most will know the story...in the years after WWI, an epidemic of viral encephalitis swept the country. Over the next several years, some of the survivors developed a severe form of Parkinson's, gradually becoming completely immobile, and landing in nursing homes. This was not a vegatative state; as we found out much later, these poor souls were fully aware of their plight. In the summer of 1969, Dr. Oliver Sacks took a job in a New York City long-term care facility, and decided to give some of these post-encephalitis patients what was then a brand-new drug, L-Dopa. The miracle was profound; the patients "awakened" [not really the right term]....alas, the miracle was temporary...side effects appeared, the therapeutic range shrunk, and the patients went back to their old state, or worse. Actually, some of the "cures" were more or less "permanent", but these were a minority. "Awakenings" is a series of case studies, the story of agony, short-term ectasy, then more agony. Medicine is like that; all progress meets failure along the way. This book lets the reader know what that feels like to the doctor. L-Dopa, with its derivatives, is still around; it's still dangerous for anyone not an expert to use.
Oliver Sacks is a Neurologist, and writes like one [and like a philosopher]. That's OK. He combines skill with compassion and basic human decency; if any of my family needed a Neurologist, I'd want Oliver Sacks. Neurology, like Oncology, is a sad specialty, with a lot of unhappy endings. Despite having an interest, and aptitude, that's probably why I didn't end up in it. This is a truly profound book; unless you're a Neurologist [not just a physician], you will need the glossery. However, your effort will be well rewarded.
Summary of Awakenings
Awakenings--which inspired the major motion picture--is the remarkable story of a group of patients who contracted sleeping-sickness during the great epidemic just after World War I. Frozen for decades in a trance-like state, these men and women were given up as hopeless until 1969, when Dr. Oliver Sacks gave them the then-new drug L-DOPA, which had an astonishing, explosive, "awakening" effect. Dr. Sacks recounts the moving case histories of his patients, their lives, and the extraordinary transformations which went with their reintroduction to a changed world.It hardly seems fair that so many great doctors are also great writers. Perhaps it's qualities like sensitivity, craft, and dedication that keep physicians like Oliver Sacks in hospitals all day and at writing desks all night; if nothing else, these qualities shine in books like Awakenings. This powerful set of case histories rises above its pathological foundation to find new literary territory, a medical-spiritual synthesis equally stimulating for the mind and the soul. It's no wonder Hollywood producers chose to turn it into a feature film--anyone can see the universal human struggle against bondage and despair in these pages.
The sleeping-sickness epidemic of 1918 caused hundreds of survivors to slip into a bizarre rigid paralysis with similarities to advanced Parkinson's disease. These patients, only occasionally able to communicate or move, were nearly all institutionalized for life, their ranks increasing every now and then with similarly afflicted men and women. Sacks came to work at a long-term care facility shortly before the first exciting results with L-dopa and Parkinson's in the late 1960s; his patients soon embarked on dramatic, difficult recoveries from up to 50 years of torpor. He documents their spiritual and medical obstacles with great care to portray their individual personalities, long suppressed but finally released. Though many great doctors are also great writers, few can compare with Oliver Sacks for expressing the relation of medicine to the human spirit. --Rob Lightner
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