Book Summary: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

Author and Neurologist writes a book named “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”, and the title intrigues you the most, because you sit and think that there is no way a mistake like this can be made. It intrigues you to read the book and find how that in fact this tale and others that seem too far-fetched are true stories, but of people with some sort of neurological dis-normality. There are 24 different clinical tales of neurological disfunctions in this book and each one is different. They all come together to teach you about different neurological cases that are different but have been talked to with the amazing Neurologist Oliver Sacks who attempts to treat and or help every case in every way he can.

Chapter 1: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

This first chapter is about a patient that goes by the name Dr .P. He was a singer and a music teacher, and during this time is when he developed a condition where he couldn’t recognize his students’ faces and was just recognizing them by their voices and would see faces when there were none to see. While speaking to Dr. Sacks, Dr. P would not look into his eyes although was facing the direction of Dr. Sacks. Dr. P during this examination failed to identify basic pictures, but described the components of the picture just not the whole picture all put together. At the end of this exam with Dr. Sacks, he walked to his wife and tried to pick up her head, which is where the title of this book and chapter come from because this is when he mistook his wife’s head as his hat.

You find out that his sensations are perfectly fine since he is not blind, but his perception is impaired that he can’t transition to faces and things. He has trouble with the concept of left which shows there is a problem in the right hemisphere of his brain. Sacks finds out that Dr.P was a painter and that helped Sacks realize that Dr. P had developed visual agnosia. Sacks couldn’t say what was wrong with Dr. P or a treatment, but he told him to continue to play music and teach it.

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After this, Sacks never saw him again but was informed that Dr. P taught music till the end of his life. I know someone with similar symptoms as those that Dr. P had. My uncle stopped being able to tell people from people and couldn’t recognize things after a certain point. This chapter was so interesting to me because I have seen this first handed. It is not every day that you can compare something in a book to something in real life but that experience was hard to deal with until he passed away in 2015.

Chapter 2: The Lost Mariner

This chapter is about a man who was admitted into a nursing home when he was forty-nine years old names Jimmie G due to memory. Jimmie could recall information such as his birthday, name, where he was from and he could tell Dr. Sacks about his early life, such as that he was serving in the military during World War II. Sacks comes to find out that when Jimmie is speaking, he is speaking in the present tense of the year 1950. He tells Sacks about how he was nineteen years old and Sacks gives Jimmie and mirror and told him to look at himself.

Jimmie was distraught and was not handling what he saw in the mirror very well, but about two minutes after his reaction, Jimmie reintroduced himself to Dr. Sacks because he had no recollection of him. Jimmie did not have his fully memory but he could recall events from the past, such as that he would play games with Sacks. He would remember playing a game with a doctor but he would say it happened a while back. Sacks came to the hypothesis that Jimmie G had suffered from Korsakov’s Syndrome. This is a condition that is rare but is brought on by a lot of alcohol intake and that messes with parts of the brain that is associated with memory, hence Jimmie G’s memory loss.

This chapter made a connection with me because eventually people suffer from memory loss, it is just not expected to be as soon as forty-nine years old. You see your grandparents and they suffer from loss of memory but not to the point of being at such a young age. In this chapter Jimmie G at least is able to remember things from his young life and that is good. He was happy with the memories he had and was at peace.

Chapter 3: The Disembodied Lady

This chapter talks about a “sixth sense” of proprioception which is ability to feel your own body as your own and a flow with the body and the outer world. A lady named Christina who was a computer programmer at twenty-seven years old was sent to the hospital to have her gallbladder taken out. The day before she had her surgery, she had a nightmare that she couldn’t stop her body from moving around. The doctors didn’t think anything of it and thought it was just nerves. On the day of her surgery, she told the doctors she had anxiety and couldn’t fell her body.

Sacks came into the picture to examine her, and he found that Christina lost all of her proprioception which means she couldn’t feel anything in her joints, or muscles. She would have to make up for this by using her five sense to compensate. Christina had to use her hearing to regulate her voice such as the volume and the tone. She had to reintroduce herself to talking, and walking and eating, because without her proprioception she didn’t know where any of her body was. She then learned how to live without her proprioception.

This chapter made me think of questions such as, when people who lose their proprioception, do they teach them all how to use their five sense to familiarize themselves with their bodies or was it just her? How often does a case like this happen when it is just sudden and no signs or symptoms before? Is there therapy for people that have to go through this? Things like this are what go through my mind and what helped me connect with this chapter, because it was so sudden and it seems like it could happen to anyone, and out of nowhere.

Chapter 4: The Man Who Fell out of Bed

In this chapter you meet a man who thinks that a severed leg found on his bed is a prank from doctors. These doctors told this man that he had a lazy left leg. When he found the leg in his bed he tried to throw it off the bed and he ended up falling out of the bed when doing so. When Sacks came to speak with him, he asked if he knew his own leg and the man said his leg on his body wasn’t his real leg. Sacks asked where his real leg was and the man said he did not know where it was.

This chapter is strange to me and made me come up with questions like, how does this man see a severed leg in the bed with him and not see it connected to his body since it’s his? How does something like this happen and no one tries to talk to them about the symptoms they might experience? How does one not know what their leg looks like? These are the connections I tried to make with this chapter, because this was such a strange case.

Chapter 5: Hands

In this chapter there is a woman who is sixty years old named Madeline J. She has cerebral palsy and told Sacks she couldn’t do anything with her hands. Sacks did research and found a group of soldier that had said they could not use their hands as well, but with them they could remember when they used them normally as compared to Madeline J who said she had never used her hands normally.

Madeline’s first step to using her hands normally was learning to eat a bagel with them, then from there she started feeling all different types of things with them. She then got to the point where she was sculpting things with her hands. She had finally learned how to control her hands with the help of Sacks pushing her to do so.

To connect with this chapter, I tried to think of how one would do anything without their hands. How could one function and live day to day without them and I could not come up with an answer. Hands are such an important tool in everyday things such as cooking, lifting, eating, and some people even talk with their hands. I connected by feeling sorry for Madeline for having to live her life for sixty years without the feeling of her hands, but then being joyous when finding out she finally learned how to use them and did everything that everyone else can do.

Chapter 6: Phantoms

A phantom in neurology is when someone no longer has that body part, but can still feel it, even without it there. There are multiple people in this chapter who give their stories about their phantoms. It starts with a sailor who no longer has his index finger and felt the phantom for forty years after losing his finger. No one knows how a phantoms comes to be but there is science that shows that pathological disorders such as a stroke can stop the feeling of a phantom.

Another story of a phantom is Charles D. He said his symptoms where dizziness and he would often fall to the ground. Sacks came to realize that Charles could only walk correctly if he was staring at his feet the whole time. Sacks stated he was suffering from tabes, which causes a delirium of proprioceptive illusions. Another case of Sacks was a man who claimed to have a phantom foot. He said his foot was bad and good and that when it was bad it would hurt, but when it was good it would help him walk right with his prosthetic foot. Sacks stated that he thinks people with phantoms should come up with a routine to either get rid of the phantom or to learn to live with it.

To connect with this chapter I imagined losing a limb for any reason. And how life would be without it but still having the feeling of it. How does one not have a limb but change aspects of their life to fit? Do you do everything the same way if you have a prosthetic limb but still feel yours is there? How does your everyday life change?

Chapter 7: On the Level

Mr. MacGregor explained his situation to Oliver Sacks as other people saying that he leaned. He would walk around a room at a twenty degree angle and to the left and thought he was walking straight. Sacks then proceeded to show MacGregor a video of himself walking and that is when MacGregor realized he did walk with a lean. MacGregor came to find out that he leaned to one side while walking due to the effects of Parkinson’s. While MacGregor and Sacks were talking, MacGregor had asked Sacks if he could orient himself with his glasses as a level surface. Later, glasses with a hanging pendulum became popular in the hospital MacGregor stayed at and helped other patients walk and stand straight up.

This chapter was interesting to me, because such a simple fix helped lots of people who suffered from Parkinson’s to help walk straight up and it didn’t take a surgery or anything like that. It was a simple fix and its mad a lot of people happy and not only just helped one person but that simple designed helped multiple others. It was something strange that a man couldn’t walk upright, but it was fixed in a matter of no time.

Chapter 8: Eyes Right!

Mrs. S had suffered from a stroke, but after her stroke things did not go back to normal. Instead, she had no concept of “left”. When eating her food, she would only eat off the right side of the plate, and when looking for things she had lost she only looked to the right of herself. After not seeing or having concept of “left”, she learned to spin herself in a full 360 degrees to see things she couldn’t see before.

This chapter is also like the previous chapter in a simple fix that helped someone. All she had to do was teach herself a full 360 and she could see things she could not previously see before. It’s people with hard things to overcome that can overcome them with nothing medical such as surgeries and be happy after.

Chapter 9: The President’s Speech

One day at a hospital, Sacks witnessed and analyzed people in a hospital listening to the speech being given by the President .He soon realized the global aphasia patients couldn’t understand anything from the President’s voice. While analyzing them, he realized the words were ringing false to the patients in the hospital. Emily D is then introduced and she couldn’t understand how a voice sounded, whether it be happy or mad. She taught herself how to pay attention to the faces of the people she was trying to understand. While listening to the same speech by the President, she said he was not speaking good prose. Sacks then ended with saying the brain damaged people listening to the speech were undeceived because they could not make out what the President was saying.

This chapter is interesting because this is when Sacks reveals that sometimes people with a disorder that is neurological could be living a better life than those of normal people. People can’t be manipulated by politics and politicians if they can’t understand them and I think that is very important. One to not be manipulated is a very important thing and that helps the connection with this chapter.

Chapter 10: Witty Ticcy Ray

This chapter is a chapter about Tourette’s and a drug called L-Dopa that was given to patients that suffered from sleepy-sickness. From them taking this new drug it caused them to have symptoms like those that suffer from Tourette’s. Sacks meets with a man named Ray, who had Tourette’s that made him have violent spasms and would not let him concentrate on anything longer than seconds at a time. He would yell profanities and , and due to his condition Ray was above average at some games he played. Sacks then realized that he could help Ray’s symptoms by giving him a drug called Haldol.

Ray was not a fan of this drug, so him and Sacks worked together to see if Ray could have a life without the habits from his Tourette’s. Ray started taking Haldol again and started to see himself without any tics. Ray has now lived a good and normal life due to this drug and is married with a great job. This chapter was interesting to read because there are a lot of people who suffer from Tourette’s and get bullied for having it. To find out that this one drug helped someone lose the symptoms of Tourette’s he had to live a normal life is spectacular. This is a normal life for someone who thinks they can’t have it, and it’s all thanked to this drug Haldol.

Chapter 11: Cupid’s Disease

Eighty-eight year old Natasha K began to feel energetic and more curious after turning her age. She gave herself the diagnoses of having “Cupid’s Disease”. She told Sacks she had contracted syphilis when she was younger but that she only treated it with penicillin. Sacks found out that she had a rare case of cerebral syphilis. After finding out what her diagnoses was, she asked Sacks if he could leave her untreated because she liked how her disease made her feel. He gave her penicillin to kill the spirochetes in the brain, but let her be from the mental changes she had overcome.

For this chapter I had questions such as, if syphilis does things like this to you, why do doctors make it seem so scary? Can all cases of syphilis end like this? How rare is this occurrence of it having this type of effect on your mentality? Can people who contract syphilis not be scared and choose not to be treated because of this happening to them mentally?

Chapter 12: A Matter of Identity

Sacks meets a man by the name of William Thompson who has a case of Korsakov’s Syndrome and left him to not remember anything for more than a few seconds. Sacks saw his case as strange because Thompson would make up new identities for himself, and this is usually not a symptom of Korsakov’s. Sacks thinks Thompson does this for him not having any idea or recollection of who he truly was or is.

Since Thompson can’t remember who he was, he makes up identities of who he thinks he could be, but it is sad because Thompson really thinks he is these people that he says he is. With William all his speaking does is isolates himself from people, and this causes William to usually be left alone by peers and not realize how isolated by others he really is. This chapter connects with me because there are a lot of people that isolate themselves, but not on purpose but for being who they feel on the inside. I believe people should be surrounded by people that love and care for the for who they really are.

If you suffer from a neurological disorder it does not make you any different and you should still have peers that you’re able to speak with even if you introduce yourself as a different person every time. We all deserve to find peace with ourselves and have a sense of peace with others that we can talk to and vent to. Is there a cure to this loneliness that could come from Korsakov’s? How often does not being able to identify yourself happen from this disease?

Chapter 13: Yes, Father-Sister

Mrs. B, who is suffering from a cerebral tumor calls Sacks “father”, “sister”, and “doctor”. She explained herself as not being able to put all of Dr. Sacks together so she has to put him together piece by piece and detail by detail. She also explains to Sacks that she can no longer see a difference with left and right. She has no center to her mind but her brain works normally.

This chapter is significant because there are people out in the world whos’ minds are different and work different from others, but that is not to say they aren’t normal people and can’t do normal things such as we can. Everybody thinks and sees things differently, but that does not mean their minds don’t work normally like everybody else’s.

Chapter 14: The Possessed

In this chapter you hear about Sacks meeting with a woman who seems to be having a temper-tantrum. When Sacks inspects spends more time inspecting her, he sees that she is actually caricaturing passersby. He was so amazed by this lady that he spent hours talking to her. Sacks then concluded that, patients with an advanced disease of Tourette’s can choose to give into the impulses or not. Most advanced Tourette’s diseases that are considered “super” can fight the urge to give into their impulsive behavior and usually succeed in not acting on them.

This chapter is odd for me. How does one have “super Tourette’s but not act on the Tourette’s impulses? How can one stop the impulses that consider you Tourette’s? How can people do this but Tourette’s is still a medical condition?