11 May 2024

Oliver Sacks: neurologist, pianist, scholar

Oliver Wolf Sacks (1933-2015) was born in London, youngest of four sons of two Lithuanian Jewish doctors. Oliver spent most of his childhood in London, though his GP father and surgeon moth­er sent him to a rural boarding school for 4 years in WW2 to es­c­ape the horr­ific air raids. Sacks hated bullying and cruelty and 4 years later, back home, he hid in his base­ment chem­istry lab. Uncle Tung­sten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood (2001) discussed how growing up in a home of poly­maths fostered his investigative skills.

Dr Sacks favourite activities:
playing the piano and writing books

He got a bachelor’s degree in physiol­ogy (1954) & medicine (1958) from Queens College Oxford. He did his house-year at Mid­dlesex Hospital London in 1959 and was house-surgeon at Queen Elizabeth, Birm­ing­ham in 1960. Dr Sacks moved to the US to work at Mt Zion Hospital, San Francisco (1961–62), then a neurology residency at Uni of Calif.

Sacks moved to NY in 1965 for a fellowship at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, becoming a cl­inical Prof of Neurology (1966–75). He also joined the charitable Bet Abraham Hosp­ital NY as a staff neurologist (1966–2007), meeting patients who’d contract­ed a sl­eeping sickness, encephalitis lethar­g­ica, during a much earlier ep­id­emic (1917-27). These patients had survived sleeping sickness only to develop a Parkinson’s that caused immob­ility, depression, speechlessness or catatonia! Dr Sacks gave them the drug L-dopa, emerging as a treat­ment for similar symptoms in Parkins­on’s. His clinical work at Bet Abraham led to his book Awakenings (1973). This book, about a group of patients with atypical enceph­alitis, won widespread attention.

Sacks was led by Russia's neuropsychologist, Alexander Luria (1902–77). Luria's vital research was in linguistic aphasia, ant­erior lobe pathology, speech dysfunction and child neuro­psychology. The two men never met, but they maintained a 5-year corresp­ondence and in 1977, Sacks wrote his mentor’s obituary for The London Times.

Explore strange brain pathways in famous case histories like The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1986), using his pat­ients’ disord­ers to discuss the human condition i.e he carefully ill­um­inated pat­ients’ exist­en­tial AND pathological condit­ions. Some critics called his blend of medicine & phil­osophy ins­ight­ful eg The Independent of London called him the “presiding genius of neuro­logical drama”. Reviewers praised his graceful prose.

Some critics found him infuriat­ing, accusing Sacks of expl­oit­ing his subjects. Scientists said that his clinical stories over-emphasised the stories and under-emphasised the clinical. A London neuro­­scientist doubted whether Sacks had provided any scientific in­sights into the neurolog­ical con­ditions he had written about in his many books (Guardian 2005).

A million copies of Sack’s books were printed in the U.S and his acc­ounts of neur­ol­ogical oddities were soon adapted for Hol­lywood, opera, theatre and literature. An opera based on The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat premiered in London in 1986 and in the Lin­coln Centre NY in 1988. Robin Wil­liams portrayed a Sacks-like doctor in the film ver­s­ion of Aw­ak­enings (1990), along with Robert De Niro. Rich­ard Powers based a central character on him in his novel The Echo Maker (2006). The Girl in the Letter (2018) and The Missing Daughter (2019) by Emily Gunnis did very well.

Recording personal experiences in volumes written for popular aud­iences did well. Having injured a leg in a moun­t­aineering accident, he learned first hand how a physician’s dismissal of ­a patient’s condition hinder­ed rec­uperation, as he told in A Leg to Stand On (1984).

Still recording the amazing circumstances of the pat­ients he met and their remarkable adaptations, Sacks wrote See­ing Voices (1989). He exp­lored the ways in which sign language provided the deaf with commun­ic­ation AND served as a discrete culture. In An Anth­rop­ol­ogist on Mars (1995), he documented the lives of 7 pat­ients living with difficult conditions including autism, and how they created functional lives.

Trips abroad were important. On his journey to Micronesia Sacks studied a population with a high incidence of colour blindness and to Guam to study a mysterious form of paralysis in The Island of the Col­ourblind (1997). He presented further case stud­ies in The Mind Travel­ler (1998), a programme produced for tv. The Mind’s Eye (2010) in­vestigated the compensatory mechanisms employed by people with sensory disorders. Hal­lucin­at­ions (2012) recorded con­ditions from epilep­sy and drug use, to sens­ory depriv­at­ion that caused hallucin­at­ions.

In 1989 Sacks won a Guggenheim fellowship for his studies of the influence of culture on the abnormal neurological processes underlying the rare inherited disease, Tourette Syndrome. Sacks also introduced Asperger Syndrome to lay audiences, humanising his patients.

Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, 2007
The relationship between music and the mind

This skilled pianist analysed the relationship between music and the mind, and of patients with conditions relating to music in Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (2007). He pointed to mus­ic’s ability to reach dementia patients, showing that music app­rec­iat­ion is hard-wired into the brain. Sacks believed Mozart made him a better neurologist!

Though Sacks remained in the U.S, he never gave up Brit­ish citizenship and he was made Commander British Empire in 2008. Other awards incl­uded honours from Guggenheim Foundation, Americ­an Acad­emy of Arts & Letters, National Sc­ience Foundation and Royal College of Physicians.

He wrote up his adventures On The Move (2015). And he also discussed his sexual identity for the first time, since realising he was gay in his teens. He settled into a LONG period of celibacy that lasted 35 years before he met and fell in love with writer Bill Hayes in 2008.

Dr Sacks remained active with age. In 2007, at 74, he accepted an int­er­­disciplinary teaching position at Columbia. From 2012–15 he returned again to the New York Uni School of Medicine in Neurol­ogy. And despite the enormous success of his books, he never gave up his “unglam­orous” medical practice, because it prov­ided him with data and because he loved working with patients.

In Feb 2015 he announced his own terminal can­cer. The ocular mel­an­oma had spread to his liver, and he died at 82. His essays were pub­lished posthumously as The River of Consc­ious­ness (2017). The document­ary Oliv­er Sacks: His Own Life was published in 2019.

For a slightly new angle, read Fenella Souter 2015 who wrote that this doctor was famous for his books about people with bizarre neurological disorders. But Dr Sacks had some very impressive mental quirks of his own.


29 comments:

Jo-Anne's Ramblings said...

Never heard of the man but he sounds interesting

roentare said...

Such a talented man who lives the life to the fullest

Deb said...

Living as a celibate for most of his long life left him plenty of energy to pursue his other passions. But it must have been very lonely.

Margaret D said...

A wonderful read of an interesting man.
Thank you Hels.

Hels said...

Jo-Anne

neither had I, until my parents' rabbi in their care home asked me to examine the connection between beloved old music and the dementing mind. Even residents who had forgotten how to speak properly could still remember the words and tunes of songs they loved back in the 1930s and early 40s.

jabblog said...

I hadn't realised the extent of his work.

Hels said...

Deb

Sacks was clear about his sexual preference in his late teens, but was afraid his career would end in disgrace if people knew he was gay. Plus he was lacking confidence in himself, despite being a genius. So he remained celibate until very late in life when he was happy to acknowledge his partnership with Bill Hayes.

Andrew said...

As so often, I've learnt about a high achiever. I am a little sceptical about him being gay and 35 years of celibacy. The best experiences happen when you are younger and your drive is strong.

Hels said...

Fun60

I am coming to your place :)

My first introduction to Dr Sacks' writing was "Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain" (2013). Each story dealt with people who'd had their lives seriously impacted by music.
Most stories were uplifting but some told cases of people who suffered from music.

Hels said...

Margaret

most of us are lucky if we have ONE area of skill and/or one passion. In medicine alone, Dr Sacks researched and wrote about Tourette’s syndrome to migraine, autism, parkinsonism, hallucinations, epilepsy, phantom limb syndrome, music therapy, schizophrenia, retardation, Alzheimer’s and deaf sign language.

Hels said...

jabblog

Who knew how talented Sacks' piano playing was? He was a classically trained pianist of some skill, skilled enough learn the repertoire. His love for classical music came out in his book; his references to classical works were detailed and knowledgeable and he loved the great masters.

Diary of an Autodidact
https://fiddlrts.blogspot.com/2017/06/musicophilia-by-oliver-sacks.html

Hels said...

roentare

just listing his published books exhausted me:
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
Musicophilia
An Anthropologist on Mars
Awakenings
Seeing Voices
The Island of the Colourblind
The Mind’s Eye and Hallucinations
Migraine
A Leg To Stand On
Oaxaca Journal
Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood and
On the Move: A Life.
The River of Consciousness
Gratitude
Everything in Its Place

Hels said...

Andrew

everyone wants to be a clever high achiever with a name that is known around the world. But how many people are really well-known beyond their own front yard?

Of course Oliver Sacks paid some high prices for achieving his goals eg constant anxiety, a horrible ocular melanoma and hallucinations, but he would have seen it as totally valuable in the overall scheme of things.

Liam Ryan said...

Very interesting.

He is on my required reading list. I have heard of his "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" but never knew it was turned into a film.

DUTA said...

The man seems to have been a Genius: skilled pianist, versatile doctor, writer. Ive met personally someone (still alive) whom I considered a genius. He was a pianist and teacher of piano, a linguist and a professor of linguistics at the university, writer. He was no doctor, as far as I know.

Katerinas Blog said...

Thanks a lot for this post.
I read it carefully, from the beginning it reminded me of the movie.
This man offered a lot to the university community as well as humanity.
I believe there is definitely a connection between music and learning.
Be well and have a beautiful week!

Hels said...

Liam

"Dr Sacks recounts the case histories of patients lost in the apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders: people afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations; patients who have lost their memories and their pasts; who are no longer able to recognise people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents. These strange and brilliant tales remain, in Sacks’ sympathetic telling, deeply human. They are studies of life struggling against incredible adversity, enabling us to enter the world of the neurologically impaired".

https://www.oliversacks.com/oliver-sacks-books/the-man-who-mistook-his-wife-for-a-hat/

I wonder if any reader who has seen the film can give us some feed back.

Hels said...

Katerina

the connection between _maths_, _piano_ and _foreign languages_ is discussed all over the place. This probably occurs because all three skills rely on patterns to create structure and coherence. Autism doesn't weaken the links at all; in fact people with special needs often have a preference for sequences .. which give them predictability.

Hels said...

DUTA

Dr Sacks was certainly a genius, starring in the areas that he was passionate about. This did not mean that he didn't have mental and physical issues, nor did it mean he didn't obsess about constant competitive sports and constant travels. When did he do it all, since he was writing and publishing all day and night?

Your friend sounds to have similar skills and passions: a pianist himself, a teacher of piano, a linguist himself and a professor of linguistics at the university, plus a writer. This is not a coincidence, I am thinking.

My name is Erika. said...

I thought I recognized that name. Not that I have read any of his books, but I had read/saw some interviews with him. It was great to read about him to learn more about who he actually was Thanks. And happy new week.

hels said...

Erika
I had never seen an interview with Dr Sacks, so I assumed he was anxious about his looks or his speech. I assumed he was much more confident about his writing.
Wrong about his looks, at least. He was a very handsome man, even in old age.

mem said...

He was an amazing Character and I very much think that he made the human mind interesting to the ordinary man thus opening up pathways to tolerance for difference from "the norm" . His service to humanity may not have been in hard medical research but it certainly changed us for the better in ways' that "ivory tower science" doesn't because most of us cant relate to it without losing attention.

Hels said...

mem

agreed. His initial medical observations were from face to face contact in his medical practice, and may not have been based in the hard medical research that many other doctors demanded. Indeed his careful process of observation and reflection was often ridiculed by his contemporaries.

Conversation (2nd Sept 2015) said that for Sacks, his was both a scientific method and a literary device. He believed his science books were ways to transmit original, compelling scientific ideas to literate audiences. To expand their thinking beyond ivory tower science.

diane b said...

What an amazing person. I had heard of him but had no idea of the extent of his work. He chose a very interesting and difficult topic to study in neurology.

Hels said...

diane

you are not the only one, alas. I did a 4 year undergrad degree in psychology and a 3 year master's degree in applied psychology, and never heard of Dr Sacks. In the 1960s and early 70s, we were still studying Freud and Carl Jung.

bazza said...

Despite some negative comments about Sacks' work, it cannot be denied that he was a great populariser of neuroscience (perhaps in the same way that Richard Dawkins was a great public advocate of evolutionary biology).

Hels said...

bazza

that is true for most lay readers now, but how true was it for neurologists and scientific researchers during Dr Sacks' career? Thankfully his family was brilliant and supportive. His parents were both clever surgeons; British chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks was his nephew; and Israeli statesman Abba Eban was a cousin.

Oliver Sacks: his own life said...

Oliver Sacks: His Own Life explores the life and work of the legendary neurologist and storyteller, as he shares intimate details of his battles with drug addiction, homophobia, and a medical establishment that accepted his work only decades after the fact.
The film features exclusive interviews with Sacks conducted just weeks after his terminal diagnosis, months prior to his death in August 2015.
For international screenings, see https://www.oliversacksdoc.com/watch-now

Hels said...

Many thanks. I saw the film and was both mesmerised and confused by his intimate details. I hope other bloggers have access to Oliver Sacks: His Own Life... it certainly was his own life.