The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat Summary

In the book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Sacks, the author describes odd psychological phenomenons in which he’s had personal experience with. Sacks describes multiple patients with lack, in the first part of his book, and patients with abundances, in the second part of the book, and transfer, in the third part of his book, of physiological features or abilities. The first of the studies in this book that were found the most interesting is the inspiration of the title. Dr. P, a music teacher, came to Sacks perfectly healthy other than the inability to distinguish visual images such as faces. He could however recognize specific features such as teeth. Dr. Sacks showed Dr. P a series of pictures to determine what he could …show more content…
Madeleine J was a 60 year old woman who was blind and had cerebral palsy. She found her hands to be as useless as “lumps of dough on the end of her arms”. All of Madeleine’s sensory capacities were proficient other than the impairment of perceptions. Every medical test done on her hands and arms showed that her hands were physically able, but still had no capability to use them. Dr. Sacks ran tests such as having Madeleine use her hands to identify objects and try to feel them, she could easily describe the texture of the object but when she didn 't immediately know what the object was she would not, as many people would, explore the object with her hands, she would simply give up. This was a hard case for Dr. Sacks, it was seemingly “glove and stocking” neuropathy, a numbness of the feet in hands due to diabetes, but Madeleine did not have diabetes. While it was not a numbness it was found to be cured the same with re-realization. Due to her cerebral palsy Madeleine has always had an abundance of care surrounding her, so the use of her hands was never necessary. Madeleine’s hands did not have the capability to be used because she had never used her hands. Dr. Sacks had told the nurses to lag in her feeding, not starve her careful not to be cruel, but simply make her impatient enough to try herself. Soon enough she grabbed for a bagel, in the process realizing her …show more content…
When Stephen had stopped using PCP, cocaine, and amphetamines he began having withdrawal symptoms like most do, one of which presented him dreams in which he was a dog and all smells were surprisingly poignant as a dog would smell. After waking from these dreams his sense of smell was enhanced in real life just as it was; after around three weeks his smell would go back to normal. Tests were not necessary in this study because there was in fact nothing to test, but going off of the information given Dr. Sacks determined stephens state was most likely a amphetamine induced dopaminergic excitation causing a hyperosmia. In short, the drugs the medical student had done in the past had heightened his sense of smell in short bursts of times due to the effect the drugs had on his brain. A case that Dr. Sacks encountered similar to Stephens is a story of a man who had a head injury and completely lost his sense of smell. One could say that Stephens drug use acted as both a brain injury and a brain enhancement, that of which caused the dog-like smell sensations. This shows us that chemicals put into the body can have long lasting effects on a human 's brain. Theses effects do not however constantly affect the person whom it relates to. This study is intriguing in that Stephen 's dreams warned him of the brain having a spasm of nerves in which caused this smell