L'homme qui prenait sa femme pour un chapeau et autres récits cliniques

mass market paperback

French language

Published March 2, 1992 by Seuil.

ISBN:: 978-2-02-014630-2

(2 reviews)

In his most extraordinary book, “one of the great clinical writers of the twentieth century” (The New York Times) recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders.

Oliver Sacks’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.

If inconceivably strange, these brilliant tales remain, in Dr. Sacks’s splendid and sympathetic telling, deeply human. They are studies of life struggling against incredible adversity, and they enable us to enter the world …

In his most extraordinary book, “one of the great clinical writers of the twentieth century” (The New York Times) recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders.

Oliver Sacks’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.

If inconceivably strange, these brilliant tales remain, in Dr. Sacks’s splendid and sympathetic telling, deeply human. They are studies of life struggling against incredible adversity, and they enable us to enter the world of the neurologically impaired, to imagine with our hearts what it must be to live and feel as they do. A great healer, Sacks never loses sight of medicine’s ultimate responsibility: “the suffering, afflicted, fighting human subject.”

26 editions

El Pamplina reviewed El hombre que confundió a su mujer con un sombrero by Oliver Sacks

Amor por sus pacientes

5 stars

El doctor Sacks dedicó su vida a estudiar a personas con graves problemas neurológicos. Se podría pensar que una actividad así haría que viera a sus pacientes como especímenes, objetos de estudio a diseccionar. Nada más lejos de la realidad. Este libro está lleno de amor, amistad y empatía hacia todos sus pacientes. Los retrata describiendo sus patologías con tal delicadeza y calor humano, que llegamos a comprender (hasta el punto donde eso es posible) su visión del mundo y vivencias como si fueran nuestras. Un conjunto de relatos maravilloso; el testamento de un científico excepcional.

spectrumgirl reviewed El hombre que confundió a su mujer con un sombrero by Oliver Sacks

La sensación de conectar con la pasión de tratar a los pacientes.

5 stars

Es un libro básico para quienes quieren curiosear en los casos neuroclínicos más excpecionales y no es para menos. La verborrea es exquista. Una pena que el que escribe es un hombre de su tiempo (con todo lo que eso conlleva). Centra el aprecio a sus pacientes basado en la inteligencia, aunque creo que aprendió un poco cuando se abrió un poco en su carrera. Y se dota de una sensibilidad para comprender lo que pasa que creo que en esa época no abundaba. Ojo es un libro que triggea en ciertas actitudes por el poco conocimiento que se tiene de ciertos colectivos en esa época (autismo, discapacidad intelectual...).