Oliver Sacks, a professor of neurology at New York University, author of bestseller full of what he called “clinical tales” – and gave rise to Hollywood movies like Awakenings (with Robert De Niro and Robin Williams) and At first sight (with Val Kilmer and Mira Sorvino) – died Sunday of eye cancer in his home in New York. I was 82 years old.
In his latest book, entitled autobiography On the Move (“moving”, “changing”) and published a few months ago, Sacks revealed little-known parts of his intense personal story: was motard and bodybuilder, was addicted to amphetamines. Was a homosexual, only now in more tolerant times, publicly assumes – but who practiced celibacy for 35 years
And there is not much room for doubt:. Lived every moment of this life in full. Just read the numerous testimonies and articles of friends and admirers published in the international press in recent months, following his “death foretold.”
It is therefore difficult to address here all facets and stages of life this doctor in love with chemistry and music, physics and neuroscience. But one thing is certain: what became known worldwide – and in fact, essential for millions of readers – was that one intersection that Sacks invented between neurology and the art of telling, motivated by his love for his patients
“Sacks helped to humanize a series of strange neurological disorders – and, to some extent, has natural bizarre symptoms such with tics and tremors of patients,” said the PUBLIC by email the known Portuguese neuroscientist Antonio Damasio. “Did readers realize that behind the strangeness of these events, there is also a person who thinks and feels. This was a remarkable achievement, achieved by Sacks over incessantly written decades. “
Sacks wrote with humanity and empathy with no equal (to say nothing of his literary and scientific mastery) on the pathologies most bizarre neurological. And always had deep and exciting things to say about the struggle of patients with its tragic diseases, describing how anyone the secrets of the most mysterious organ that is the human brain.
The proof, the admiration he had for the Anglo-American poet (and your friend) WH Auden (1907-1973). Or who is now a British writer Hilary Mantel (author, among others, the acclaimed novel Wolf Hall ), which stated, in a short text in 2013 in the journal The Guardian Sacks that was his hero and he had “high clinical history to literature level,” adding that “[Sacks] never makes the reader feel a voyeur ; their approach is subtle, and what emerges from all his work is his respect for his subjects. It seems to love human beings (…). Does not love humanity in the abstract but admire and learn from each individual, no matter how devastated [by the disease]. “
From London to New York Born
in London in 1933 into a family of doctors and scientists, Sacks studied medicine at Oxford University and then emigrated to the US, where did the internship in San Francisco and Los Angeles, reads the short biography on his Site official. And since 1965, he took up residence and exercise Neurology in New York, dedicated to treating people with neurological disorders literally out of this world (it’s no accident that entitle later, one of his great books of clinical tales An Anthropologist on Mars ).
It was in 1973 that published Awakenings , his second book, which later would lead to the film with the same name with Robin Williams in the role of Sacks. But his “saga” with the group of patients described in the book, “frozen in time” since the 1920s due to a mysterious epidemic of “lethargic encephalitis” and forgotten in a hospice Bronx, begun shortly after his arrival in the Big Apple . Sacks made them literally wake up, four decades later, when he had the idea of them to manage a then-new drug against Parkinson’s disease, L-DOPA
However, what made famous sacks -. In medicine and in writing – was his first collection “Clinical Tales” themselves, The man mistook a woman with a hat , published in 1985. The story that gives title this anthology could not leave anyone indifferent: it was that of a man who suffered from “prosopagnosia” (as indeed Sacks himself), a rare disorder that makes the person unable to distinguish human faces each other despite having a vision and processing the brain entirely normal visual information. British theater director Peter Brook would create in the 1990s in Paris, the show L’Homme qui ( man ), based these tales of Sacks.
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