A neurologist who claims to be equally interested in disease and people,
Sacks (Awakenings, etc.) explores neurological disorders with a novelist's
skill and an appreciation of his patients as human beings. These cases, some
of which have appeared in literary or medical publications, illustrate the
tragedy of losing neurological facultiesmemory, powers of visualization,
word-recognitionor the also-devastating fate of those suffering an excess of
neurological functions causing such hyper states as chorea, tics, Tourette's
syndrome and Parkinsonism. Still other patients experience organically based
hallucinations, transports, visions, etc., usually deemed to be psychic in
nature. The science of neurology, Sacks charges, stresses the abstract and
computerized at the expense of judgment and emotional depthsin his view,
the most important human qualities. Therapy for brain-damaged patients
(by medication, accommodation, music or art) should, he asserts, be designed
to help restore the essentially personal quality of the individual.

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