Book Review

Awakenings by Oliver Sacks

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


As World War I drew to a close, besides the great Spanish Flu epidemic there was also an epidemic of a 'sleepy sickness' or encephalitis lethargica in which patients would be unable to stay awake and would sleep for days, weeks, or even months. Often they would seem to recover fully and live full lives for a decade or more only to be struct with a kind of Parkinsonism. They would spend the remaining decades of their lives rigid, catatonic, or a variety of other symptoms that prevented them from interacting normally with their environment. Unable to be cared for by family or even most institutions they ended up in long-term chronic hospitals.

In 1966 Dr. Oliver Sacks joined of Mount Carmel Hospital in New York where over 80 such patients were housed and having their basic needs seen to. Instead of dismissing them or avoiding them Dr. Sacks took an interest in his patients, saw their humanity through their disabilities, and set about doing what he could for them. A new drug, L-DOPA, had possibilities to relieve the Parkinson symptoms. "Awakenings" chronicles the history of the epidemic, Dr. Sacks' and his patients' experience with L-DOPA, and what they learned from their experience.

"Awakenings" is a good example of what Maria Popova calls "the everythingness of everything" of Oliver Sacks. He saw his patients as complete people, not the sum of their symptoms. He chronicles how everything affects their responses to their disease: the hospital environment of space, light and air, hospital policies, family relationships, the emotional investment the staff made in the patients, and the patients' own curiosity and humor towards themselves and their lives. He discusses many theories of people and events, not just medical theories but also physics and the catastrophic threshold of chaos theory.

My take away from the book, besides wishing very much to have a doctor like him who listens and observes and is interested in everything affecting my life, is how everything has a direct effect on peoples' lives; space, light, air, love, respect, support. And how our tendency to want to compartmentalize people's lives and expect exemplary behavior under horrible circumstances has no basis in reality.

Highly recommended



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