The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks is a novel featuring twenty-four individual cases of neurological disorders collected by Oliver Sacks himself, a well-known physician and neurologist. It is divided into four sections, which include a number of cases that relate to each section. These include: Losses, Excesses, Transports, and The World of the Simple.

The first section of the book, Losses, focuses on a number of patients who possess deficits or losses, such as Aphonia, Aphemia, Aphasia, Alexia, Apraxia, Agnosia, Amnesia, and Ataxia. These terms refer to neural and mental functions from which patients have become deprived due to a specific incident or a failure of development (Sacks 3). In The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Mr. P, a well-known musician, is unable to perceive things as whole objects. His distinct inability carries over to people too, as he cannot recognize anyone unless they have some sort of distinguishing feature. Such a visual impairment was somewhat unheard of at the time. The Lost Mariner is about a man who is convinced that he is still nineteen years old and in the navy. He is unable to recall any people or events after the year 1945. Jimmie G. can, however, solve complex puzzles rather quickly and is good at checkers, which is perplexing to Dr. Sacks. In Eyes Right!, sixty-year-old Mrs. S suffered from a stroke which damaged the right half of her cerebral hemisphere. As a result, she cannot perceive her left side. She applies makeup to only the right side of her face and leaves food on the left side of her plate uneaten. Six other interesting tales remain in this section.

Excesses, the book’s second section, is pretty much the opposite of the first sectio...

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...mous singer. The only exception was that the things Martin remembered held no emotion; they were pretty much meaningless to him. It was only when he returned to church, where he could sing and direct the church choir that he seemingly rediscovered himself, and as a result grew much more lively despite his retardation. The Autist Artist is about a man named Jose who was retarded and experienced many seizures. Though he did not speak, he could sketch images in great detail. His doctors came to the conclusion that he was autistic, yet this was not a one hundred percent accurate diagnosis. His seizures continually got worse, and soon his mother decided that she did not want him leaving the house, in the event that he would have a seizure away from home. Being isolated inside proved too much for Jose, who became hysterical. After this, he was taken to the hospital.