A Leg to Stand OnDr. Oliver Sacks's books Awakenings, An Anthropologist on Mars and the bestselling The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat have been acclaimed for their extraordinary compassion in the treatment of patients affected with profound disorders. In A Leg to Stand On, it is Sacks himself who is the patient: an encounter with a bull on a desolate mountain in Norway has left him with a severely damaged leg. But what should be a routine recuperation is actually the beginning of a strange medical journey when he finds that his leg uncannily no longer feels part of his body. Sacks's brilliant description of his crisis and eventual recovery is not only an illuminating examination of the experience of patienthood and the inner nature of illness and health but also a fascinating exploration of the physical basis of identity. |
Contents
TWO BECOMING A PATIENT | 21 |
THREE LIMBO | 84 |
FIVE SOLVITUR AMBULANDO | 110 |
SIX CONVALESCENCE | 123 |
SEVEN UNDERSTANDING | 166 |
AFTERWORD 1993 | 183 |
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Common terms and phrases
abyss action activity alienation amputation anosognosia asked Babinski body body-image brain called cast classical neurology Convalescent Home darkness derealization disorders disturbance dream everything existential experience face faradized fear feeling felt femoral nerve flashes forgotten function gazed half Hampstead Heath hand happened higher-order consciousness Highgate hospital ical imagine impulse injury inner knee left leg Leont'ev less limb longer looked lost Luria memory migraine mind minutes motionless mountain move movement muscle needed nerve neurologist neuropsychology never night normal Nurse Sulu occurred Odda Oliver Sacks paralyzed parietal lobe patella patients perception perhaps peripheral phantoms physiological physiotherapist precisely proprioception quadriceps reality realized recovery Sacks scotoma seemed sense sensory sick silence sleep somehow sort space speak spinal spontaneous stereoscopy strange sudden suddenly surgeon surgery Swan syndrome thing thought tion turned uncanny unreal visual walk wonder words Zaporozhets