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8a79063
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If the students were taught about shuttle flights, plate tectonics and submarine volcanoes, they were also immersed in the traditional myths of their culture--the ancient story, for example, of how the island of Pohnpei had been built under the direction of a mystical octopus, Lidakika. (I was fascinated by this, for it was the only cephalopod creation myth I had ever heard.
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pohnpei
creation-myths
mythology
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Oliver Sacks |
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88d6981
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fossilised" dream-sequences preserved as such in the cortex, precise replicas of past experience; they appear to be mnemic images which unfold, given the initial activation (epileptic, migrainous, experimental, etc.) at the same rate as the initial perceptual experience."
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Oliver Sacks |
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035a99d
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We have seen that there are two forms of stimulus which are particularly prone to evoke migrainous reactions in predisposed individuals: inordinate excitations or arousals, and inordinate inhibitions or slumps. Within certain "allowable" limits (which vary greatly from person to person), the nervous system maintains itself in a region of equilibrium, homeostatically, by means of continuous, minor, insensible adjustments; beyond these limits..
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Oliver Sacks |
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43f81c9
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Transient states of depersonalisation are appreciably commoner during migraine auras. Freud reminds us that "... the ego is first and foremost a body-ego ... the mental projection of the surface of the body." The sense of "self" appears to be based, fundamentally, on a continuous inference from the stability of body-image, the stability of outward perceptions, and the stability of time-perception. Feelings of ego-dissolution readily and pro..
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Oliver Sacks |
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e1a9751
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She had an intense feeling for structure, the way things were put together - whether they were human bodies, or plants, or scientific instruments or machines.
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Oliver Sacks |
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491b3be
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it is not (usually) the ideas of philosophers that change reality; nor, conversely, is it the practice of ordinary people. What changes history, what kindles revolutions, is the meeting of the two. A
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Oliver Sacks |
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844d817
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Patients with delirium were almost always on medical or surgical wards, not on neurological or psychiatric wards, for delirium generally indicates a medical problem, a consequence of something affecting the whole body, including the brain, and it disappears as soon as the medical problem has been righted.
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Oliver Sacks |
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eb55694
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In 1968, I read Luria's Mind of a Mnemonist.
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Oliver Sacks |
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2045135
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By what warrant, therefore, is such an attack to be termed an extended epilepsy rather than a quite brief and severe, let us say, a condensed migraine?
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Oliver Sacks |
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99f2759
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Attacks characterised by little more than malaise are likely to be regarded as mild viral illnesses. Attacks characterised by alteration of affect and consciousness--mild drowsiness or depression--may be taken for purely emotional reactions. Both
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Oliver Sacks |
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afaaffc
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many cardinal characteristics of migraine aura, in its visual (scotomatous), tactile (paraesthetic) and aphasic forms. We
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Oliver Sacks |
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e084c5e
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patients with aphasia and left-hemisphere lesions, says they have lost 'abstract' and 'propositional' thought--and compares them with dogs (or, rather, he compares dogs to patients with aphasia).
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Oliver Sacks |
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4e4b43b
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Having Tourette's is wild, like being drunk all the while. Being on Haldol is dull, makes one square and sober, and neither state is really free...You 'normals', who have the right transmitters in the right places at the right times in your brains, have all feelings, all styles, available all the time--gravity, levity, whatever is appropriate. We Touretters don't: we are forced into levity by our Tourette's and forced into gravity when we t..
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Oliver Sacks |
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32d95c8
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Ia reshil provesti eshche odin, poslednii eksperiment. Byla ranniaia vesna, pogoda stoiala kholodnaia, i ia prishel v pal'to i perchatkakh, skinuv ikh pri vkhode na divan. Vziav odnu iz perchatok, ia pokazal ee P. - Chto eto? - Pozvol'te vzglianut', - poprosil P. i, vziav perchatku, stal izuchat' ee takim zhe obrazom, kak ran'she geometricheskie figury. - Nepreryvnaia, svernutaia na sebia poverkhnost', - zaiavil on nakonets. - I vrode by tu..
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Oliver Sacks |
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67f6039
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Okazavshis' na meste, ia obnaruzhil patsienta riadom s krovat'iu. On lezhal na polu, pristal'no razgliadyvaia svoiu nogu. V vyrazhenii ego litsa smeshivalis' gnev, trevoga, nedoumenie i veseloe izumlenie - glavnym obrazom, nedoumenie s primes'iu ispuga. Ia poprosil ego vernut'sia v postel' i spravilsia, ne nuzhna li pomoshch', odnako vse moi pros'by i rassprosy eshche bol'she vyvodili ego iz sebia. Togda ia prisel riadom s nim na pol, i vot..
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Oliver Sacks |
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64fc92c
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Ia uzhe otmechal, chto posle publikatsii <> ia poluchil ogromnoe kolichestvo pisem - kak lichnykh, tak i nauchnykh. Nekotorye iz nikh kasalis' voprosov ob odnoiaitsovykh bliznetsakh, drugie - sposobov chuvstvennogo vospriiatiia chisel i smysla i znacheniia etogo iavleniia. Byli i pis'ma, posviashchennye sposobnostiam i psikhologii autistov, a takzhe metodam ikh vospitaniia i obucheniia. Osobenno interesnymi okazalis' pis'ma ot r..
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Oliver Sacks |
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e0b57bc
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The hateful mood of a migraine--depressed and withdrawn, or furious and irascible--tends to melt away in the stage of lysis, to melt away with the physiological secretion. "Resolution by secretion" thus resembles a catharsis on both physiological and psychological levels, like weeping for grief. The"
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Oliver Sacks |
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c9eb2fc
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Sudden fright, or rage, or other strong emotion may disperse and displace a migraine almost within seconds. One
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Oliver Sacks |
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4b9251c
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And I often dream of chemistry at night, dreams that conflate the past and the present, the grid of the periodic table transformed to the grid of Manhattan. [...] Sometimes, too, I dream of the indecipherable language of tin (a confused memory, perhaps, of its plaintive "cry"). But my favorite dream is of going to the opera (I am Hafnium), sharing a box at the Met with the other heavy transition metals--my old and valued friends--Tantalum, ..
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science
manhattan
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Oliver Sacks |
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cfc5cff
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Udivitel'noe delo - ona i pobedila, i proigrala. Vosstanoviv deistvie, ona utratila bytie. Pustiv v khod vse resursy nervnoi sistemy, a takzhe voliu, muzhestvo, vyderzhku i nezavisimost', ona prisposobilas' k novoi zhizni. Stolknuvshis' s bespretsedentnoi situatsiei, ona vstupila v skhvatku so strashnym vragom i vyzhila - ogromnym napriazheniem fizicheskikh i dukhovnykh sil. Ee mozhno prichislit' k kogorte bezvestnykh geroev nevrologii. No ..
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oliver sacks |
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31458ce
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Tourette's syndrome is seen in every race, every culture, every stratum of society; it can be recognized at a glance once one is attuned to it; and cases of barking and twitching, of grimacing, of strange gesturing, of involuntary cursing and blaspheming, were recorded by Aretaeus of Cappadocia almost two thousand years ago. Yet it was not clinically delineated until 1885, when Georges Gilles de la Tourette, a young French neurologist--a pu..
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Oliver Sacks |
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974ad08
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An animal, or a man, may get on very well without 'abstract attitude' but will speedily perish if deprived of judgment. Judgment must be the first faculty of higher life or mind--yet it is ignored, or misinterpreted, by classical (computational) neurology.
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Oliver Sacks |
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938182b
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In the newly sighted, learning to see demands a radical change in neurological functioning and, with it, a radical change in psychological functioning, in self, in identity. The change may be experienced in literally life-and-death terms. Valvo quotes a patient of his as saying, 'One must die as a sighted person to be bom again as a blind person,' and the opposite is equally true: one must die as a blind person to be born again as a seeing ..
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Oliver Sacks |
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bf33d51
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I am very bad at factual exams, yes-or-no questions, but can spread my wings with essays. Fifty pounds came with the Theodore Williams prize--PS50! I had never had so much money at once. This time I went not to the White Horse but to Blackwell's bookshop (next door to the pub) and bought, for PS44, the twelve volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary, for me the most coveted and desirable book in the world. I was to read the entire dictionar..
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Oliver Sacks |
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dfd5495
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Whichever method is utilised--violent physical, visceral, or emotional activity--the common factor is arousal. The patient is, as it were, awoken from his migraine as if from sleep. We shall further have occasion to see, when the specific drug therapies of migraine are under discussion, that the majority of these too serve to arouse the organism from a state of physiological depression.
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Oliver Sacks |
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7148e19
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McKenzie once called Parkinsonism "an organized chaos," and this is equally true of migraine. First there is chaos, then organization, a sick order; it is difficult to know which is worse! The nastiness of the first lies in its uncertainty, its flux; the nastiness of the second in its sense of immutable heavy permanence. Typically, indeed, treatment is only possible early, before migraine has "solidified" into immovable fixed forms."
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Oliver Sacks |
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2f0eaa6
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Now there is stillness--such a stillness as I have never heard before in all my life. Soon I shall start moving again, and perhaps I will never stop.
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Oliver Sacks |
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84f0b8a
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Our efforts to 're-connect' William all fail - even increase his confabulatory pressure. But when we abdicate our efforts, and let him be, he sometimes wanders out into the quiet and undemanding garden which surrounds the Home, and there, in his quietness, he recovers his own quiet. The presence of others, other people, excites and rattles him, forces him into an endless, frenzied, social chatter, a veritable delirium of identity-making and..
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Oliver Sacks |
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e238018
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It remains, for me, the most powerful and elegant explanation of how we humans and our brains construct our very individual selves and worlds.
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Oliver Sacks |
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daac0ad
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The real functional "machinery" of the brain, for Edelman, consists of millions of neuronal groups, organized into larger units or "maps". These maps, continually conversing in everchanging, unimaginably complex, but always meaningful patterns, may change in minutes or seconds. One is reminded of C. S. Sherrington's poetic evocation of the brain as "an enchanted loom", where "millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always ..
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Oliver Sacks |
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9ce084d
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He reached out his hand, and took hold of his wife's head, tried to lift it off, to put it on. He had apparently mistaken his wife for a hat!
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Oliver Sacks |
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864843e
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an octopus may have half a billion nerve cells distributed between its brain and its "arms" (a mouse, by comparison, has only 75 to 100 million). There is a remarkable degree of organization in the octopus brain, with dozens of functionally distinct lobes in the brain and similarities to the learning and memory systems of mammals. Not only are cephalopods easily trained to discriminate test shapes and objects, but some can learn by observat..
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Oliver Sacks |
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d15a68e
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Day by day, week by week, the dreams, the visions, came oftener, grew deeper. They were not occasional now, but occupied most of the day. We would see her rapt, as if in a trance, her eyes sometimes closed, sometimes open but unseeing, and always a faint, mysterious smile on her face. If any one approached her, or asked her something, as the nurses had to do, she would respond at once, lucidly and courteously, but there was, even among the ..
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Oliver Sacks |
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bbce3d3
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Cualquier enfermedad introduce una duplicidad en la vida: un "ello", con sus propias necesidades, exigencias y limitaciones."
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Oliver Sacks |
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253d68b
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Henry VIII in full armor, it was said, weighed 500 pounds.
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Oliver Sacks |
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097fbbf
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Think!" cried the Professor. "This prodigious bowl was filled with ice to a depth of three hundred feet. And when we and our children are dead, seeds will have sprouted in the silt, and a young forest will nod over these stones. Here before you is one scene of a geological drama, past and future implicit in the present you perceive, and all within the span of a single human generation, and a human memory."
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Oliver Sacks |
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c24746f
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I am very bad at factual exams, yes-or-no questions, but can spread my wings with essays. Fifty pounds came with the Theodore Williams
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Oliver Sacks |
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7f68514
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Travel now by all means--if you have the time. But travel the right way, the way I travel. I am always reading and thinking of the history and geography of a place. I see its people in terms of these, placed in the social framework of time and space. Take the prairies, for example; you're wasting your time visiting these unless you know the saga of the homesteaders, the influence of law and religion at different times, the economic problems..
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Oliver Sacks |
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bfb84db
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And go to San Francisco! It's one of the twelve most interesting cities in the world. California has immense contrasts--the utmost wealth and the most hideous squalor. But there's beauty and interest everywhere.
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Oliver Sacks |
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aee8758
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The act of writing is itself enough; it serves to clarify my thoughts and feelings. The act of writing is an integral part of my mental life; ideas emerge, are shaped, in the act of writing.
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Oliver Sacks |
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6ac0861
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Increasingly now, week by week, the normal, unconscious feedback of proprioception was being replaced by an equally unconscious feedback by vision, by visual automatism and reflexes increasingly integrated and fluent.
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Oliver Sacks |
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242cf56
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Clearly, passionately, he wanted something to do: he wanted to do, to be, to feel--and could not; he wanted sense, he wanted purpose--in Freud's words, 'Work and Love'.
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Oliver Sacks |
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8ef741a
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Michael was all too conscious of his condition, and when he was in his grimmest moods, he would say, "I am a doomed man," though there was a hint of the messianic in this too: he was "doomed" as all messiahs are doomed. (When my friend Ren Weschler visited him once and asked how he was, Michael replied, "I am in Little Ease." Ren looked baffled, and Michael had to explain that Little Ease was a cell in the Tower of London so small that a ma..
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Oliver Sacks |
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380ffb0
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The physician is concerned [unlike the naturalist] . . . with a single organism, the human subject, striving to preserve its identity in adverse circumstances. --IVY MCKENZIE
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Oliver Sacks |