Paperback, 246 Pages
Non-fiction/ Science/ Medicine
By: Oliver Sacks
“If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self—himself—he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.”
🌟 I have been intrigued by this book’s title as soon as I first heard it. I thought it was a fiction book but then discovered that it is Non-fiction and I decided to read it this year as part of my challenge to read some non-fiction books.
🌟 Then, I discovered that it was written by a neurologist and it features neurological disorders. I had a hate relationship with Neurology and its disorder in the first two years in medicine. I then decided that I had enough and that I want to understand it more. I went back to the basics, took Neuroanatomy and Neuroscience courses, aced them and I became yet another fan of neurology!!!
🌟 The human brain is one of the most intriguing things ever and is also one of the biggest mysteries of the universe, and although our understanding of it is way better than decades ago, we still haven’t scratched the surface –at least for me-.
🌟 The disorders this book includes are interesting as the man who mistook his wife for a hat literally, Phantom limbs in which people can feel pain and sensations in their amputated limbs, Seizures that made a man has super smelling, the twins who can’t do simple arithmetic but can tell you how many sticks are stacked together just by a simple glance and more!! Some of the cases were not very interesting but they were mostly short cases so it was OK!
🌟 I can’t say Dr.Oliver is the greatest author because his writing is full of medical jargon and may be hard to understand for non-medical readers. He assumes that we have a good knowledge in many things as opposed to the book I am currently reading (Which discusses sleep and the language makes much more sense for all readers). Dr.Oliver’s language is like a text-book/ scientific language more befitting for teaching than a general book.
🌟 Summary and Prescription: I have a long history with Neurology so this was a mini challenge for me to read. The language is not very easy (But still can be understood) for the general population. There are some really interesting cases here for anyone who is interested in the human brain and it’s disorders.
I decided to give this one a 3.5 out of 5 stars!
If you want this book you can get it from here:
The book prescription 
Thanks for sharing. I was intrigued to begin with, but you’ve convinced me to give it a miss as it sounds like it will be over my head with all the jargon.
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You’re welcome
Thanks for checking it out!
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