THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT – SHOWCASE OF THE AWESOME POWERS OF THE MIND BY OLIVER SACKS
The genius of Oliver Sacks
This book can be a little difficult to understand for a lot of people because we don’t have much knowledge about neurology or neuro-science in general but that’s why this book stands out. The genius of Oliver Sacks makes astounding real life stories of patients suffering from neurological disorders sound as if they are stories. He allows all of us to get a good and very accurate idea about the depths of the human mind when he narrates each individual experience of his patients and how they adapted to a normal lifestyle .
Oliver sacks is known worldwide for his work and is the world’s best known neurologist. His work is so interesting that it defines what is to be human even when those individuals who come to him for treatment might be termed as insane or abnormal by the rest of the world. I was really intrigued while reading such cases some of which I shall recount to give my readers an idea of what is to expect.
Sacks tries to understand very minutely as to what the patient actually wants to convey because the realm of neuro-science is very complex and most of the times none of them are perfectly sure of what actually is bothering them such is the mysterious world of the nervous system.If we consider the case of the ‘phantoms’, the person (most haven’t mentioned their real name.) may have a part of his body missing but lives their entire life with the idea of that missing ‘phantom limb’ or any other disembodied part;they are alive with the idea that they still possess that part as an entirety of their system. Now why does this happen? Well you have to read the book to get a very practical answer for this bizarre question .There are cases where aged mariner comes to the conclusion that he’s a lot younger and is back in his twenties – strange tricks played by the mind ;cases where a man with questionable eyesight is unable to distinguish among things and even mistakes his wife for a hat.A case where a man seems to forget distant memories in a vey short period of time to a case to a very interesting revelation about the ‘Tourette’s Syndrome’ ;your mind is bound to think beyond its normal capacity while reading this book.
This is nothing like your regular science textbook and brings you eye to eye with the absolute reality of the world. These stories about Sacks patients are nothing like you have read before and it’s an absolute must read for science geeks. It’s going to change your perception about a lot of unknown factors and the world of neuroscience in general. Have a good time reading it.
