Apollo's Arrow

Christakis, Nicholas A. Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live. New York: Little, Brown, Spark 2020. Print

First Sentences:

In the late fall of 2019, an invisible virus that had been quietly evolving in bats for decades leaped in an instant to a human being in Wuhan, China.

It was a chance event whose most subtle details we will probably never know. Neither the person to whom the virus gravitated no anyone else was fully aware of what had transpired. It was a tiny, imperceptible change.

Note:

[Note: This book was written and my review post started in late 2020, the middle, and maybe the most fearful  time of the COVID-19 pandemic, months before the vaccine was developed when the feeling of helplessness was high. But as the virus tightened it grip on the world, I abandoned reading his book and my review piece. Just couldn't face writing about the virus.

Now that the vaccine is available, hope is on the rise, and the investigation into the Wuhan labs has re-opened, I thought it might be time to finish reading this book as well as my review to share the author's detailed first-hand research regarding the COVID-19. My review remains as I started it a year ago, with a few updates.]

 

Description:  [written November, 2020]

 

Is it too soon to spend time reading about the origins of COVID-19? 

 

I have been restless in my reading lately: even more impatient with opening paragraphs, unsatisfied with plot, dialog and characters, and generally uninterested in sitting down for long stretches to immerse myself in a book, any book. Most of my readings recently were obtained in piles from the library, then returned in the next day out of frustration ... with the books and with myself for not being more accepting.

 

But then I came across Nicholas Christakis'  Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live and everything changed. I started to look forward to reading something again, and at all hours. I bookmarked pages in this book with interesting information, and I learned a lot about something - the coronavirus - that I realized I knew very little about.

 

Christakis directs the Yale Institute for Network Science as well as the Human Nature Lab. He is a doctor who studied the COVIS-19 virus, its origins, and its effects from its very first days. He is one of the original researchers involved with recognizing COVID-19 and gathering initial data to address the coming pandemic. With this book, you are reading data from a knowledgeable, qualified authority who was there and has studied the research in-depth.

 

He starts his chronolical book with examinations of previous virus encounters, from the bubonic plague to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-1), detailing their causes, protection against, accounts from primary sources from the age, and factors that led to world recovery. He then documents timelines dating from the first known cases of COVID-19 in China as well as in the United States, including the invasion of the virus into his own remote town in New Hampshire where he had previously felt safe due to its isolation. Routes of infected individuals are shown and demonstrates through real examples how one person can affect thousands through casual contact. 

 

In this book, terms like "Flattening the curve," "Physical distancing," and others were still relatively new. There are descriptions of various advisories issued by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) which were suppressed, and Christakis notes the results from ignoring these policies. Studies of mask-wearing were just starting to be conducted.

Some of the interesting information he relates include:

• Security at airports searching for the SARS virus originally included thermal body scans. These intrusive procedures did not identify a single case of SARS among 35 million international travelers,
  
• Droplet transmission of viruses is less worrisome than airborne particles since the droplets are heavier and tend to drop down within six feet of expulsion, whereas the airborne particles can float long distances;
• COVID also brought about some positive changes such as the cessation of automobile and airplane movement which resulted in cleaner air; and people banding together which demonstrated "the importance of collective will and helped set the stage for political activism to address other long-standing problems in society;"
• Marilee Harris, who, as a six-year-old in 1918, contracted the Spanish Flu, then caught the COVID virus at age 107 and survived both episodes.

It is a book depicting a time when the world was still unraveling the mysteries of COVID-19, searching for answers regarding social interaction and personal prevention, and with some denying the growing situation or wistfully hoping for a vaccine. New York City Mayor Bill de Blassio, on March 5, 2020, was photographed on the subway, saying there was "nothing to fear, go about your lives..." Schools were still debating whether to close, and public gatherings still took place. But on March 17, Governor Andrew Cuomo shut down New York theaters, nightclubs, and restaurants, a shocking edict that left many angry, but began the fight back against COVID.

 

This book is the real thing regarding details about COVID, with so much data that you might be wary of being overwhelmed. Rest assured, Christakis is a skilled writer, someone who can recount a myriad of facts and intersperse them with personal accounts to weave a compelling page-turner.

And so Americans were caught unprepared -- emotionally, politically, and practically. We did not even have the equipment needed, from PPE to tests to ventilators, to save our lives. But most of all, we did not have a collective understanding of the threat that we are facing....

Microbes have shaped our evolutionary trajectory since the origin of our species. Epidemics have done so for many thousands of years... Plagues always end. And, like plagues, hope is an enduring part of the human condition.

 

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Mukherjee, Siddhartha. The Emperor of All MaladiesL A Biography of Cancer  

Incredibly detailed yet completely readable history of the origin of cancer, its changing treatments, and future. Mukherjee is a eminent researcher who draws on his own experiences treating cancer as well as the extensive literature of doctors throughout history battling the disease.  (previously reviewed here)

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

Sacks, Oliver. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales. New York: Touchstone 1970. Print

First Sentences:

Dr. P. was a musician of distinction, well-known for many years as a singer, and then, at the local School of Music, as a teacher.

It was here, in relation to his students, that certain strange problems were first observed.....Not only did Dr. P. increasingly fail to see faces, but he saw faces when there were no faces to see: genially, Magoo-like, when in the street he might pat the heads of water hydrants and parking meters, taking these to be the heads of children....


Description:

Such an unusual title for a book, but Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat refers to an actual event. The patient, Dr. P described above, as he left Sacks' neurological consulting office, put on his coat and then reached over to his seated wife, grabbed her head, and tried to yank it up to put onto his own head as if it was his hat. Earlier, Dr. P had been unable to identify the name or purpose of his shoe as well as a common glove which he guessed was "a container of some sort" although a container for what he couldn't say.

You might think Dr. P and other highly unusual patient afflictions described in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat are fiction, but they are all fascinatingly true. Each chapter describes a patient presented to Dr. Sacks in his capacity as a neurological consultant in New York City hospitals, nursing homes, and chronic care facilities. The patient exhibited such behavior as:

• A gray-haired man unable to remember anything since his military days when he was nineteen years old. He refused to recognize himself in a mirror as an old man and did not believe a photo taken of the Earth from the moon was possible since in his mind man had not been to the moon, He currently could not remember anything after only a few seconds, including people he had just met, conversations he'd held, or events.

•  A hospitalized patient who, looking down to the foot of his bed, saw a grotesque leg sitting next to him. When he continually tried to toss it out of the bed, he fell along with it, repeatedly not recognizing it as his own healthy leg attached to his body.

•  A strapping, healthy woman who, just before a minor gall stones operation, mysteriously and suddenly lost complete sense of her body. She could not get information from any part of herself head to toe, thus making her unable to sit up, control her fluttering hands, or even keep her mouth from hanging open.

• A ninety-year-old woman who has become "frisky" and "euphoric" about men ... the results of an illness seventy years ago.

Dr. Sacks is at first as puzzled by these cases as we readers are. They are simply so odd that he even wonders to himself whether these people are faking their symptoms. But he tests them closely, reviews the literature, and consults with other experts in various fields until he comes up with a working hypothesis for each case. Unfortunately, often there is no treatment much less a cure for these patients, but Dr. Sacks does provide some reassurance that the person is not crazy, just suffering from an extreme case of a neurological mis-functioning.

I was absolutely riveted by these case histories. Dr. Sacks is a extraordinary observer of people and clear relater of facts and symptoms to weave each afflicted patient into a captivating story. You want so much for there to be a magic pill for each person suffering these calamitous behaviors, but unfortunately, Dr. Sacks finds that often there is not.

A great read from the fascinating symptoms, the mystery behind the causes, to the unending pursuit of treatment. Highly recommended.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Sacks, Oliver. An Anthropologist on Mars.   

Any of Sacks' books would be a great follow-up to learn about more unusual cases of neurological diseases. In addition to these patient histories, this book presents a bit more about Sacks' life and thoughts on his profession. He is a wonderful writer, scientific, neutral, and clear in his descriptions of mind-bending problems and patients.

The Winter Soldier

Mason, Daniel. The Winter Soldier. New York: Little, Brown. 2018. Print

First Sentences:

They were five hours east of Debrecen when the train came to a halt before the station on the empty plain.

There was no announcement, not even a whistle. Were it not for the snow-draped placard, he wouldn't have known they had arrived....He was the only passenger to descend.

Description:

World War I serves as the background for many novels which present battles, trenches, military leadership, and footsoldiers in great detail. But in my opinion, no novel rivals Daniel Mason's The Winter Soldier for a character study of one man, a doctor, and his struggles to repair the men sent to him from the battlefields while he harbors dreams of pursuing medical fame and new discoveries.

Lucius is a twenty-two year old medical student in Vienna in 1914, a devoted researcher and learner, eager to take a position in a reputable hospital and do great works. But when World War I arrives, he enthusiastically offers his services to the military, hoping for an appointment to a field hospital and a chance to follow in the footsteps of his wealthy, militaristic father.

Instead, Lucus is sent to a tiny outpost in the mountains of Hungary, just a broken down church which serves as a makeshift hospital. His job is to patch up and keep alive terribly wounded soldiers and make them stable enough to be transported to a better-equiped facility. When Lucius arrives, the church/hospital has recently been overrun by a typhus outbreak, scaring off all its doctors who fled to safer locations. All that is left of the staff is Sister Margarete, a knowledgable, efficient woman who is silent about her earlier life.

She trains Lucius, still just an inexperienced student who has never even treated a patient, in everything from how to amputate limbs to perform surgery under impossible conditions. Together they begin to create some semblance of order and begin administering medical assistance to the wounded in an organized manner.

But one patient who is wheeled into their hospital is a man almost catatonic, not speaking or moving. Jozsef proves a unique challange, a magnificient triumph, and a disasterous failure to Lucius and Sister Margarete. The man becomes a turning point in Lucius' education in both medicine and wartime brutality when a military officer comes to the hospital looking to comandeer any able-bodied men to return to the battlefields.

Author Mason brings us readers deeply into the mind of Lucius as his dreams of medical glory face the reality of a bitter cold in an isolated church/hospital doing emergency surgery. He finds himself curiously attracted to Sister Margarete and tries to uncover her background story but to no avail.

So there it is. A story that brilliantly depicts the life of one single man and the individuals he encounters in a bitterly cold Hungarian outpost during World War I. It's engrossing, sobering, and unpredictable to the very last page. Highly recommended.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Shreve, Anita. Stella Bain.  

Stella Bain awakens in a field hospital tent somewhere in France during World War I. She has no memory of any previous existence, so stays on at the make-shift hospital as a nurse. Extraordinary character study and historical depiction of war and medicine. (previously reviewed here)

Wondering Who You Are

Lea, Sonya. Wondering Who You Are. Portland, Oregon: Tin House Books. 2015. Print.

First Sentences:

The night before my husband's cancer surgery, I stay up to watch him sleep... 

We have been married  for twenty-three years. I have been a child and a woman with this man. To imagine his death is to imagine the end of myself: I cannot know this loss.

Description:

In Sonya Lea's highly personal and moving memoir, Wondering Who You Are, the author's husband, Richard, emerges from a successful operation for his appendix cancer, but now has as no memory of who he is, who his wife is, or anything else about his past. He can recognize some faces, recall certain facts, but recalls nothing about "the working narrative of one's life, one's autobiography." His short term working memory and his ability to retain information is completely gone.

Richard has lost his memories of some things -- out marriage history, major events in the children's lives -- but not others: Hamlet's soliloquy and the Superman monologue.

Thus begins the journey of Sonya to reclaim her husband and their lives, along with the questions raised regarding the medical profession. She explores every avenue to understand and possibly restore Richard's memory, from medical to spiritual to supernatural. Throughout the months after the "anoxic insult" (brain injury), they relocate to new states, take on new roles, and learn insights into each other. 

Through it all their relationship is always the center of every action. She is forced to reassess their 20+ years of marriage, who she was in that relationship, her challenges with drinking, her anger, and what their new life might be should Richard recovery his ability to remember the past. She (and Richard) find they must reassess their own personal lives and how to move on in their relationship, alone or together. But will they be able to (or want to) resume their previous lives or be forced to start over and form new memories?

Life after cancer eats what isn't true, our outworn notions, the ideas we hold on to because we want to do life "right," which mostly means what other people want us to do. But the body doesn't die. The body changes form, goes on to be dust of food or firmaments. That personality, though, that story we grow attached to: dead, dead, dead.  

This is tragic memoir of a medical error and the repercussions suffered by two people. But it is also a truly honest love story, where a couple faces tremendous challenges to their identities as separate individuals and also as two people joined in marriage. Religion, professional work, parenting, ambitions, and even everyday conversations present new problems that must be dealt with, often in surprising ways.

How can they live with each other? How can Sonya ever accept Richard's new personality? And, depending on Richard's health, what does the future hold for them together or apart?

Patients [of brain injury] do not "recover" in the sense of returning to their previous lives. Many of Richard's deficits were likely to remain, and my work would be in accepting him as he is.

While this memoir may sound overwhelmingly depressing, it actually is a moving account of the strengths and weaknesses of people facing awful situations that force them to into uncomfortable decisions. The strength of Sonya and the determination of Richard are inspiring. The book forces readers to ask, "What would I have done if faced with these challenges? Could I attack the problems as Richard and Sonya do, or would I simply collapse in frustration and hopelessness?" 

These are ordinary people in extraordinarily heartless conditions. How they address their changing lives is endlessly absorbing.

Happy reading. 


Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Watson, S.J., Before I Go to Sleep

A woman wakes one morning with no memory of where she is or even who she is. There is a greying man snoring in bed beside her who she doesn't recognize. She can function during the day, but awakes each morning with no memory. Who can she trust to tell her who she really is and who is working against her? (previously reviewed here) 

Special Post - Dealing With Cancer

Highly recommended books that discuss personal and professional aspects of cancer from writers including Christopher Hitchens, John Diamond, Will Schwalbe, Susan Halpern, and Siddhartha Mukharjee. (previously reviewed here)

The Last Town on Earth

Mullen, Thomas. The Last Town on Earth. New York: Random House. 2006. Print.

First Sentences:

The sun poked out briefly, evidence of a universe above them, of watchful things -- planets and stars and vast galaxies of infinite knowledge -- and just as suddenly it retreated behind the clouds

Description:

While the deadly 1918 Spanish Influenza swept the world, in some places entire towns tried to isolate themselves from outsiders to protect themselves from infection. Thomas Mullen, author of the novel The Last Town on Earth, imagines one such barricaded city and what it would it be like to live during these frightening times. 

Mullen's fictionalized town, Commonwealth, is a remote mill town in Washington. Its residents put up barriers on the only road into their town and then armed ordinary citizens to act as guards to turn away any person who wanders too near their borders. But when a starving World War I soldier is shot climbing over the barrier, the town must face the implications of their decisions.

And the fear, isolation, and accusations don't stop with that incident. Commonwealth society begins to crumble under the suspicions of each other and their fear of the influenza. Several Commonwealth citizens are locked up to ensure the health of the majority. But slowly some begin to wonder whether such measures are actually effective and at what cost they have to their town, neighbors, and personal code?

Mullen presents this tale of a seemingly good idea, created and carried out by ordinary, moral people, that spirals to consequences no one imagined, forcing decisions that will haunt everyone involved. An imaginative yet chillingly realistic tale that grips you immediately and hold on to the final pages.

Happy reading. 


Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Saramago, Jose. Blindness

Inexplicably, almost an entire town suddenly goes blind. The survival of ordinary people struggling to live without sight and the social interaction between the still sighted people and the blind is chilling. 

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Bauby, Jean-Dominique. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death. Paris: Vintage. 1998. Print.

First Sentences:

I had never seen so many white coats in my little room.

Description:

Sometimes the parts that make up the whole are overwhelming to contemplate. The number of bricks individually laid to make a house, the millions of railroad ties in a mile of train track, the knots and strings woven into Persian rug. Like an optical illusion, sometimes it is difficult to see that the forest is made up of thousands of trees.

To write The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death, author Jean-Dominique Bauby, a locked-in former editor for Elle fashion magazine in Paris, "dictated" each individual letter of the book in a unique way. After a massive stroke left him without movement in all body parts from the neck down and took away his ability to speak, Bauby wrote this book by blinking his left eye to indicate each letter to compose each word. It was the only body part he could control. 

Claude Mendible, who assisted Bauby in recording these letters, cleverly created a special display of the entire alphabet rearranged by frequency of letter use. He then held this display up for Bauby to see and carefully recited or pointed to each letter until Bauby blinked at his choice to start a word. Then the process was repeated for the next letter of that word, then the next, then the next ... and on and on to create The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Bauby's 132-page memoir. Unbelievable.  

Can you imagine the effort, the tedium, the self-control, the dedication to create an entire book in this manner? Bauby spent hours writing and rewriting each essay in his mind while lying alone and immobile in a hospital bed in Berck, France, before Mendible arrived to slowly transcribe his thoughts into this book.

And what a beautiful, sensitive, thought-provoking book of short essays Bauby created. Structured loosely around the daily rhythms and scheduled "events" in his locked-in hospital world, Bauby also lets "the butterfly" of his imagination and thoughts soar or wallow and writes whatever he feels at that time. He contemplates his relationships with the mother of his two children, his kids, his new companion, and the hospital staff. He describes his own emotions and the appearances of other patients glimpsed while rigidly strapped to his wheelchair during short excursions in the building. And he reflects on the tragedy of his current status and the new life he knows he will lead forever.

I need to feel strongly, to love, and to admire, just as desperately as I need to breathe. A letter from a friend, a Balthus painting on a postcard, a page of Saint-Simon, give meaning to the passing hours. But to keep my mind sharp, to avoid descending into resigned indifference, I maintain a level of resentment and anger, neither too much not too little, just as a pressure cooker has a safety valve to keep it from exploding.

But there is humor, too, in Bauby's essays:

I've lost sixty-six pounds in just twenty weeks. When I began a diet a week before my stroke, I never dreamed of such dramatic result.

The smallest of situations or actions can bring Bauby pleasure or sadness, and he relates both with clarity and power:

Having turned down the hideous jogging suit provided by the hospital, I am now attired as I was in my student days. Like the bath, my old clothes could easily bring back poignant, painful memories. But I see in the clothing a symbol of continuing life. And proof that I still want to be myself. If I must drool, I may as well drool on cashmere.

He lives as if in a "diving bell," so weighed down it is impossible for him to move. Yet the butterfly of his imagination keeps him sane and fills book with his soaring thoughts.

Once, I was a master at recycling leftovers. Now I cultivate the art of simmering memories. You can sit down to a meal at any hour, with no fuss or ceremony. If it's a restaurant, no need to call ahead. If I do the cooking, it is always  success.

The stories he relates, from a Father's Day with his family, to visits from uncomfortable friends, to his days at "the Beach Club" (a small bit of sand overlooking the ocean outside the hospital where he can sit and luxuriate in the smells of the world), to the last time he saw his father and his own tender memory of shaving him, are essays so intimate and strong they are almost poetry to read. Quiet passion, astute observations, and strong opinions are all there, but again the concept of the effort made to create these beautiful essays is almost overwhelming.

It is not until the final essay that we learn exactly what happened on that December 1995 day when the stroke occurred and Bauby went into a 20-day coma. 

How can I begin to recall those long futile house, as elusive as drops of mercury from a broken thermometer? How can I describe waking for the last time, heedless, perhaps a little grumpy, beside the lithe, warm body of a tall, dark-haired woman?

He emerges from this trauma to learn of his locked-in status. It is a cruel fate, but one he does not consistently dwell on. He immediately works to learn how show anyone he is still thinking, feeling behind his useless body. He knows it is vital to communicate with the world to preserve his self-dignity and humanness despite his limited capabilities.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was published to rave reviews in France in 1997 and later made into a poignant movie. Tragically, Jean-Dominique Bauby died of an infection two days after the book's publication. But his will, his thoughts, and his passionate writing remain behind for all in this beautiful work.

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Pistorius, Martin. Ghost Boy: The Miraculous Escape of a Misdiagnosed Boy Trapped Inside His Own Body

True memoir of a young man who contracts a mysterious illness that causes his voice, body, and all movement to be rendered uncontrollable, even though he is fully aware and thinking inside. Misdiagnosed for ten years, he eventually is able to communicate through a compassionate nurse and tell his fascinating story.

Scalzi, Joe. Lock In

Set in the future when locked-in people (paralyzed and fully sentient but unable to respond) are common due to an international pandemic infection, Lock In tells the story of one such person who is an FBI agent and conducts his investigations via a robot controlled by his mind as his inert body lays in a protective bed miles away. Fascinating. (previously reviewed here) 

An Anthropologist on Mars

Sacks, Oliver. An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales. New York: Vintage. 1995. Print.

First Sentences:

Early in March 1986 I received the following letter:

I am a rather successful artist just past 65 years of age. On January 2nd of this year I was driving my car and was hit by a small truck on the passenger side of my vehicle. When visiting the emergency room of a local hospital, I was told I had a concussion. 

While taking an eye examination, it was discovered that I was unable to distinguish letters of colors. The letters appeared to be Greek letters. My vision was such that everything appeared to me as viewing a black and white television screen. 

Description:

Oliver Sacks is a practicing neurologist and professor at medical schools in New York including Columbia and New York University, as well as a consulting clinician at a chronic care facility. His experiences with people who have fascinating brain disorders make up his highly engaging book, An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales.

In this collection, Sacks encounters and writes about such functioning, yet uniquely challenged individuals he works with including:

• An artist who, after a minor car accident, wakes to find he can only see the world in black and white. His can no longer distinguish even gradations of black, white, and gray, making his ability to paint frustratingly challenging;

• A surgeon with Tourette's Syndrome (and its accompanying uncontrollable tics, starts, verbal exclamations, and lurches), who still performs delicate surgeries;

• An autistic boy who can quickly and accurately draw complex architectural buildings in detail, even after only glimpsing them for a few seconds;

• A man, blind from birth, who regains his sight and the benefits, but also struggles with the challenges of living in a world of images where before there was only sound and his imagination;

• A 54-year-old artist who only creates paintings of the buildings in his small hometown in Italy, a location he left forever at age 15;

• An autistic woman who created her own business, invented unique machines and holding areas for cattle and other livestock, yet cannot relate to people and the language of social behavior. She must memorize how people act in various situations to remember and hopefully predict how she and others might respond to her. So strange is her distancing from other people and her own memorization of their actions that she says she feels like "an anthropologist on Mars."

Sacks interacts with these people as an interested friend rather than a prescribing doctor in a clinical setting. He converses with them as he tries to simply understand the characteristics of their particular situation, and more importantly how these people attempt to cope with their limitations.

Sacks is a great storyteller and writer, bringing both the naivete of someone looking on a peculiar situation for the first time, as well the in-depth analysis of a trained doctor and researcher using references to studies by experts in these fields to gain insights and possible explanations, but rarely solutions. 

Here are fascinating people, ably presented and befriended by Sacks, who relate their stories with a compassion and thoroughness which allow readers to fully experience the world of people successfully living with neurological disorders that might cripple others.

A heartfelt, scientific, and personal series of human stories that I guarantee will make you look at the lives of others with new admiration and insight into the challenges faces. And when you are done, I guarantee you will be thankful for your own fairly whole and normal life. 

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Sacks, Oliver. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales

The definitive collection of fascinatingly bizarre but true clinical experiences of Sacks with unusual neurological disorders, including lost memories, inability to recognize faces (including their own), ability to judge lying without hearing words, etc. Sacks treats all patients with respect as he seeks the cause and possible treatment of these cases.

Sacks, Oliver. Awakening

Intrigued by a group of people who contracted sleeping sickness just after World War ! and unable to move for decades, Sacks experiments on them with a new medicine that "wakes" them up to full consciousness, with unexpected results.