In his most extraordinary book, "one of the great clinical writers of the 20th century" (The New York Times) recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders. The stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize 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. If inconceivably strange, these brilliant tales remain, in Dr. Sacks's splendid and sympathetic telling, deeply human. They are studies of life struggling against incredible adversity, and they enable us to enter the world of the neurologically impaired, to imagine with our hearts what it must be to live and feel as they do. A great healer, Sacks never loses sight of medicine's ultimate responsibility: "the suffering, afflicted, fighting human subject." Oliver Sacks was born in 1933 in London and was educated at the Queen's College, Oxford. He completed his medical training at San Francisco's Mount Zion Hospital and at UCLA before moving to New York, where he soon encountered the patients with encephalitis lethargica whom he would write about in his book Awakenings. Dr. Sacks spent his professional life working in the United States as a neurologist and wrote a number of books including Musicophilia, and Hallucinations, dealing with the strange neurological predicaments and conditions of his patients. His memoir, On the Move, was published shortly before his death in August 2015. Sacks' work has inspired many adaptations, including the Oscar-nominated film of Awakenings starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro.

"A Touchstone book"--Title page. Originally published by Summit Books in 1985.

Losses: Introduction -- Man who mistook his wife for a hat -- Lost mariner -- Disembodied lady -- Man who fell out of bed -- Hands -- Phantoms -- On the level -- Eyes right! -- President's speech -- Excesses: Introduction -- Witty ticcy ray -- Cupid's disease -- Matter of identity -- Yes, father-sister -- Possessed -- Transports: Introduction -- Reminiscence -- Incontinent nostalgia -- Passage to India -- Dog beneath the skin -- Murder -- Visions of Hildegard -- World of the simple: Rebecca -- Walking grove -- Twins -- Autist artist -- Bibliography.