An Anthropologist on Mars

by Oliver Sacks

Reading this book felt sort of like fate, because I’d first heard of the author several years ago while chatting with a co-worker about his current book club reading. I was intrigued by the title, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and even more intrigued when I was told that it wasn’t fiction – Sacks is a neurologist and writes about real people. A different co-worker at the same job (don’t know if he was in the same book club) once described one of Sacks’s subjects who is autistic but has an incredible affinity with animals, particularly cattle, and designs more humane “animal management systems.” This is a chapter in Anthropologist, as I learned a few weeks ago when chatting with my friend GP and she brought up the same story. So, I borrowed the book!

I was completely fascinated, reading the true stories of people like the Abstract Expressionist painter who loses his ability to see color. He couldn’t even remember what color looked like after the injury to his brain. Then there’s the surgeon who has Tourette’s syndrome – with extreme lunges and “tic” gesturing at all times, even while he’s driving, except when he’s operating. I had heard of Tourette’s many times but never really knew much about it. And there are several stories about autism – I learned a lot from these as well.

Sacks writes these case studies as a knowledgeable but sympathetic and sensitive observer. He clearly explains the patient’s situation and doesn’t hide the sad, “disabling” aspects of the brain conditions. But, he also does justice to the extraordinary, “super-human” traits that the patients have and how these elevate them to a plane that is just as human, but very different, from a normal person. As a neurologist he is of course interested in them as subjects of study, but he values them as people and friends and tries very hard to spend some “real life” time with them. Readers benefit from this and are able to get to know these unique individuals as well.