Search - Awakenings

Neurologist Sacks considers the medical, psychological, and sociological factors in a study of patients who were suffering from a sleeping sickness that sickened five million people worldwide between 1916 and 1927. These patients had Parkinson-like symptoms for decades after the epidemic. They were institutionalized because their families could not provide care. Sacks describes the side-effects and positive outcomes after these people were given l-dopa in the late 1960s. This is a classic work. It gives insight into the importance of the institutional environment with regard to outcomes and the strength and endurance of ordinary human beings suffering from devastating illness and iatrogenic (disorder by treatment) problems.

I love this book!! Dr. Oliver Sacks is one of the most intelligent and resourceful doctors about matters concerning the brain, neurosis, and deseases that effect people such as Parkinson's disease, and most notably post-encephalitic patients with who Dr. Sacks treated. Most notable one patient in paticular, Leonard L. In seeing the movie, in which Robert De Niro played this part, with stark realism, and he did this so beautifully, then reading about the real Leonard L in "Awakenings" I found myself instantly drawn to every area that Dr. Sacks' career.

I strongly recommend this book to all who wish to learn what the real beauty of the inner soul is really about. No matter what is wrong or wrought outwardly, their is Hope and what the beauty of the inner soul has to offer.