Amazing (and Horrible) Diseases and Disorders

Have you ever heard songs in your head? Mistook your leg for someone elses? Thought your wife (or anybody...) was a hat? If so, then you're like one of Dr. Oliver Sacks's patients, in the book he wrote called The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales. 

Dr. Oliver Sacks

This book is a collection of short stories and tales of Dr. Oliver Sacks's life, about his most interesting patients.  There are four parts: Losses, Excesses, Transports, and the World of the Simple. Two of my favorite stories from Losses were a man in the hospital that woke up in the middle of the night and didn't recognize his own leg - he thought that the nurses were playing a trick on him by putting a severed leg in his bed, and one about an old man that tilts 20º when he stands up. One of my favorite stories from Excesses was about to partly-deaf women who heard music in their heads. An interesting story from Transports was about a man who killed his child while on drugs, but didn't remember the crime, and then he hit his head while in an institution and had it all come back to him. A story from the World of the Simple, is about John and Michael, two autistic twins.

I thought that this book is very interesting, it has a lot of crazy stories that you would think are completely fake. It's hard to understand at times, because the language was difficult, and the science can be confusing. It takes a long time to read. If you have too much time, and are interested in the brain (and you like to read), you should read this book. I would give this book four stars.

Oliver Sacks talking about a question he has about the brain.