Oliver Sacks
Oliver Wolf Sacks was a British neurologist, naturalist, historian of science, and writer.
Born in London, Sacks received his medical degree in 1958 from The Queen's College, Oxford, before moving to the United States, where he spent most of his career. He interned at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco and completed his residency in neurology and neuropathology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Later, he served as neurologist at Beth Abraham Hospital's chronic-care facility in the Bronx, where he worked with a group of survivors of the 1920s sleeping sickness encephalitis lethargica epidemic, who had been unable to move on their own for decades. His treatment of those patients became the basis of his 1973 book Awakenings, which was adapted into an Academy Award-nominated feature film, in 1990, starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro. His other best-selling books were mostly collections of case studies of people, including himself, with neurological disorders. He also published hundreds of articles, about neurological disorders, history of science, natural history, and nature. Journals and letters written by Sacks, but discovered after his death, indicate that some of his work was embellished or exaggerated.
The New York Times called him a "poet laureate of contemporary medicine", and "one of the great clinical writers of the 20th century". Some of his books were adapted for plays by major playwrights, feature films, animated short films, opera, dance, fine art, and musical works in the classical genre. His book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, which describes the case histories of some of his patients, became the basis of an opera of the same name. The television series Brilliant Minds is based on his life.
Early life and education
Oliver Wolf Sacks was born in Cricklewood, London, England, the youngest of four children born to Jewish parents: Samuel Sacks, a Lithuanian Jewish doctor, and Muriel Elsie Landau, one of the first female surgeons in England, who was one of 18 siblings. She would sometimes bring home deformed fetuses from work, where she would dissect them with her son as a way for him to learn about human anatomy. Sacks had an extremely large extended family of eminent scientists, physicians and other notable people, including the director and writer Jonathan Lynn and first cousins the Israeli statesman Abba Eban and the Nobel Laureate Robert Aumann.In December 1939, when Sacks was six years old, he and his older brother Michael were evacuated from London to escape the Blitz, and sent to a boarding school in the English Midlands where he remained until 1943. Unknown to his family, at the school, he and his brother Michael "subsisted on meager rations of turnips and beetroot and suffered cruel punishments at the hands of a sadistic headmaster." This is detailed in his first autobiography, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood. Beginning with his return home at the age of 10, under his Uncle Dave's tutelage, he became an intensely focused amateur chemist. Later, he attended St Paul's School in London, where he developed lifelong friendships with Jonathan Miller and Eric Korn.
Study of medicine
During adolescence he shared an intense interest in biology with these friends, and later came to share his parents' enthusiasm for medicine. He chose to study medicine at university and entered The Queen's College, Oxford in 1951. The first half studying medicine at Oxford is pre-clinical, and he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in physiology and biology in 1956.Although not required, Sacks chose to stay on for an additional year to do research after he had taken a course by Hugh Macdonald Sinclair. Sacks recalls, "I had been seduced by a series of vivid lectures on the history of medicine and nutrition, given by Sinclair... it was the history of physiology, the ideas and personalities of physiologists, which came to life." Sacks then became involved with the school's Laboratory of Human Nutrition under Sinclair. Sacks focused his research on the patent medicine Jamaica ginger, a toxic and commonly abused drug known to cause irreversible nerve damage. After devoting months to research he was disappointed by the lack of help and guidance he received from Sinclair. Sacks wrote up an account of his research findings but stopped working on the subject. As a result he became depressed: "I felt myself sinking into a state of quiet but in some ways agitated despair."
His tutor at Queen's and his parents, seeing his emotional state, suggested he extricate himself from academic studies for a period. His parents then suggested he spend the summer of 1955 living on Israeli kibbutz Ein HaShofet, where the physical labour would help him. Sacks later described his experience on the kibbutz as an "anodyne to the lonely, torturing months in Sinclair's lab". He said he lost from his previously overweight body as a result of the healthy, hard physical labour he performed there. He spent time travelling around the country with time spent scuba diving at the Red Sea port city of Eilat, and began to reconsider his future: "I wondered again, as I had wondered when I first went to Oxford, whether I really wanted to become a doctor. I had become very interested in neurophysiology, but I also loved marine biology;... But I was 'cured' now; it was time to return to medicine, to start clinical work, seeing patients in London."
In 1956, Sacks began to study medicine at the University of Oxford and Middlesex Hospital Medical School. For the next two-and-a-half years, he took courses in surgery, orthopaedics, paediatrics, neurology, psychiatry, dermatology, infectious diseases, obstetrics and other disciplines. During his years as a student, he helped home-deliver a number of babies. In 1958, he graduated with Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery degrees, and, as was usual at Oxford, his BA was later promoted to a Master of Arts degree.
After completing his medical degree, Sacks began his pre-registration house officer rotations at Middlesex Hospital the following month. "My eldest brother, Marcus, had trained at the Middlesex," he said, "and now I was following his footsteps." Before beginning his house officer post, he said he first wanted some hospital experience to gain more confidence, and took a job at a hospital in St Albans where his mother had worked as an emergency surgeon during the war. He then did his first six-month post in Middlesex Hospital's medical unit, followed by another six months in its neurological unit. He completed his pre-registration year in June 1960, but was uncertain about his future.
Beginning life in North America
Sacks left Britain and flew to Montreal, Canada, on 9 July 1960, his 27th birthday. He visited the Montreal Neurological Institute and the Royal Canadian Air Force, telling them that he wanted to be a pilot. After some interviews and checking his background, they told him he would be best in medical research. But as he kept making mistakes, including losing data from several months of research, destroying irreplaceable slides, and losing biological samples, his supervisors had second thoughts about him. Dr. Taylor, the head medical officer, told him, "You are clearly talented and we would love to have you, but I am not sure about your motives for joining." He was told to travel for a few months and reconsider. He used the next three months to travel across Canada and deep into the Canadian Rockies, which he described in his personal journal, later published as Canada: Pause, 1960.In 1961 he arrived in the United States, completing an internship at Mt. Zion Hospital in San Francisco and a residency in neurology and neuropathology at UCLA. While in San Francisco, Sacks became a lifelong close friend of poet Thom Gunn, saying he loved his wild imagination, his strict control, and perfect poetic form. During much of his time at UCLA, he lived in a rented house in Topanga Canyon and experimented with various recreational drugs. He described some of his experiences in a 2012 New Yorker article, and in his book Hallucinations. During his early career in California and New York City he indulged in:
He wrote that after moving to New York City, an amphetamine-facilitated epiphany that came as he read a book by the 19th-century migraine doctor Edward Liveing inspired him to chronicle his observations on neurological diseases and oddities; to become the "Liveing of our Time". Though he was a United States resident for the rest of his life, he never became a citizen. He told The Guardian in a 2005 interview, "In 1961, I declared my intention to become a United States citizen, which may have been a genuine intention, but I never got round to it. I think it may go with a slight feeling that this was only an extended visit. I rather like the words 'resident alien'. It's how I feel. I'm a sympathetic, resident, sort of visiting alien."
Career
Sacks served as an instructor and later professor of clinical neurology at Yeshiva University's Albert Einstein College of Medicine from 1966 to 2007, and also held an appointment at the New York University School of Medicine from 1992 to 2007. In July 2007 he joined the faculty of Columbia University Medical Center as a professor of neurology and psychiatry. At the same time he was appointed Columbia University's first "Columbia University Artist" at the university's Morningside Heights campus, recognising the role of his work in bridging the arts and sciences. He was also a visiting professor at the University of Warwick in the UK. He returned to New York University School of Medicine in 2012, serving as a professor of neurology and consulting neurologist in the school's epilepsy centre.Sacks's work at Beth Abraham Hospital helped provide the foundation on which the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function is built; Sacks was an honorary medical advisor. The Institute honoured Sacks in 2000 with its first Music Has Power Award. The IMNF again bestowed a Music Has Power Award on him in 2006 to commemorate "his 40 years at Beth Abraham and honour his outstanding contributions in support of music therapy and the effect of music on the human brain and mind."
Sacks maintained a busy hospital-based practice in New York City. He accepted a very limited number of private patients, in spite of being in great demand for such consultations. He served on the boards of The Neurosciences Institute and the New York Botanical Garden.