Why People Without Mental Problems Look Crazy: Stories From The Practice Of Dr. Sachs Who Turned Medicine Into Literature

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Oliver Sachs is an amazing person who managed to turn medicine into literature. It would seem that this is - but it has greatly increased the awareness of the general public about neurological disorders, and the attitude in society towards people with health problems has become much more adequate. In addition, his extensive practice contained cases, each of which could be turned into a film story (and one turned!) - they are so amazing.

The doctor who could not distinguish between faces

I must say that Oliver Sachs himself had a neurological disorder - isn't that what prompted him to study how interesting the brain sometimes works? The doctor suffered from prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize human faces. This means that he could recognize a person by sight only by sequentially comparing in his mind the shape of the nose, eyes, and mouth separately with his inner catalog of noses, eyes and mouths. This problem did not prevent him from perceiving each patient as a separate person; on the contrary, in his patients he saw, first of all, people and was keenly interested in how diseases affect their quality of life, personal history, the feelings they experience.

Oliver Sachs was born in Britain, in a family of doctors. Both of his parents were Jewish migrants from the Russian Empire. Although Sachs did not feel at least somewhat Russian, he kept in touch with the homeland of his ancestors - he corresponded with the Soviet neuropsychologist Alexander Luria, read the works of the genius from Belarus Lev Vygotsky, constantly referred to their works in his books.

Since 1960, Sachs has lived in the United States. It was from Sachs that the general public learned about the artist with autism spectrum disorder Stephen Wiltscher, a black Briton who draws the most accurate panoramas of cities with a pen - for this he flies around them in a helicopter. Stephen is now one of Britain's most famous contemporary artists, and he willingly poses for reporters. And once Wiltsher seemed to be non-contact, and no one expected that he would be able to speak, until at eight years old the boy said: "Paper." His stationery was taken away from him, and he asked them back with this word! Later he was able to speak in phrases.

The singing professor who confused people with objects

The former famous singer, designated by the letter P. Sachs, became a professor of vocals and earned respect in his new job. But over time, something strange began to happen to him. He stopped recognizing people by sight - although he recognized them perfectly by their voice. This was familiar to Sachs, but the professor not only did not distinguish between faces - he saw the faces of objects. He mistook a fire hydrant for a child, talked to round doorknobs; besides, the professor was not mad. His speeches were always sober, he behaved - except for the attempt to smile affectionately at the meters at the gas station - adequately, the subject behaved perfectly.

One day the professor decided to check with an ophthalmologist. It turned out that his vision was in perfect order … But the ophthalmologist was alarmed by such confusion in visual images, and he sent P. to a neurologist. The professor was received by Sachs. The doctor examined the singer for a long time and was very puzzled, especially by how he described the photographs from a glossy magazine. Finally, the doctor and patient said goodbye and the patient tried to put on his hat. Only at the same time he grabbed his wife by the head and pulled her up.

The next time Sachs and the singer met at a patient's home. The singer was able to identify playing cards, geometric shapes - but the doctor handed him a rose, and the patient was puzzled. He described it in parts, but I can't guess what kind of object it is … The same happened with the glove. It became clear that the patient had great difficulty distinguishing objects.

How did he cope with everyday life? It turns out that his wife had been putting all things in the same places for a long time, and the professor performed all the necessary routine, singing exclusively to himself. Without a song, he ceased to recognize anything and lost the thread of his actions. Sachs realized that he could not help the singer, and recommended that he introduce as much music as possible into his life. It seems that the part of the brain associated with music took over when the part of the brain associated with pattern recognition was damaged for some reason. The images no longer activated memory - the songs did it for them.

Later, after seriously injuring his own leg, Sachs found that his brain now refuses to perceive it as existing: Sachs could not only move his leg or feel the touch on it, but also felt as if his body always had one leg, and the other - a foreign object. He managed to force himself to walk again using music: she turned on motor memory. After Sachs thus regained some of the control over the leg, he gradually regained its sensitivity, as well as the memory of the body that the leg was (and is!).

Blindness is even stranger

Some of the stories from Sachs practice are associated with very strange types of blindness. For example, for one woman from the clinic where he worked, the right side disappeared. She painted only the left half of her face and only ate food on the left side of the plate. They tried to explain to her what was happening, but for her brain everything right ceased to exist at all, and she just got scared. In the end, the explanations were useful to her in only one way: after eating everything she saw, she began to turn the plate and eat further, until, no matter how much she turned, there was no more food. As for makeup, it still only adorned the left side of her face, and there were never any items on the table to her right.

Another Sachs patient was an abstract painter who suddenly lost the ability to see colors. To his torment, he not only began to see the world in a predominantly gray scale - he perceived all not gray and not black colors as something dirty, unpleasant, annoying (and at the same time still gray or black). He had to arrange his studio in a special way so that nothing "dirty" color would surround him, and learn how to write black and white abstract paintings (which is not easy, since most of the impression in abstractionism is created by the selection of colors).

Alas, in addition to this, in his eyes, as if someone twisted the contrast. And this means that too faded objects around became even paler and fell out of his field of vision. The artist had to leave his car.

In neuropsychiatric clinics there have been even stranger stories. Crazy Experiment: What Happens When Three Jesus Are Placed in the Same Mental Hospital.

Text: Lilith Mazikina.