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Sampling anaesthetics as a 10-year-old
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Joining my mother on her house calls
Oliver Sacks
Scientist
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Views | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 31. Joining my mother on her house calls | 482 | 00:56 | |
| 32. Sampling anaesthetics as a 10-year-old | 520 | 01:06 | |
| 33. My father's dispensary | 456 | 00:42 | |
| 34. My father's faithful secretary | 481 | 01:01 | |
| 35. My mother's career as a woman surgeon | 568 | 03:37 | |
| 36. Table conversation at home was all medical | 464 | 01:26 | |
| 37. 'Doctors are all prone to telling stories' | 488 | 01:14 | |
| 38. Remembering every patient I've ever had | 521 | 01:41 | |
| 39. My mother's influence on my storytelling style | 481 | 01:59 | |
| 40. What brought my mother to medicine? | 489 | 00:24 |
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I would sometimes go with my mother on her house calls, and her house calls were to deliver babies, and I would hear certain strange comments, like, 'She’s half-a-crown dilated'. I... I didn’t know what was dilated, although I knew what half-a-crown was. I was... I was very puzzled by these things. I... I did discover my mother’s obstetric bag at an early stage and I certainly tried both the ether and the chloroform before I was 12. The ether I didn’t like. The... the chloroform had a rather sweet, sickly smell and... really rather dangerous.
Oliver Sacks (1933-2015) was born in England. Having obtained his medical degree at Oxford University, he moved to the USA. There he worked as a consultant neurologist at Beth Abraham Hospital where in 1966, he encountered a group of survivors of the global sleepy sickness of 1916-1927. Sacks treated these patients with the then-experimental drug L-Dopa producing astounding results which he described in his book Awakenings. Further cases of neurological disorders were described by Sacks with exceptional sympathy in another major book entitled The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat which became an instant best seller on its publication in 1985. His other books drew on his rich experiences as a neurologist gleaned over almost five decades of professional practice. Sacks's work was recognized by prestigious institutions which awarded him numerous honours and prizes. These included the Lewis Thomas Prize given by Rockefeller University, which recognizes the scientist as poet. He was an honorary fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and held honorary degrees from many universities, including Oxford, the Karolinska Institute, Georgetown, Bard, Gallaudet, Tufts, and the Catholic University of Peru.
Title: Joining my mother on her house calls
Listeners: Kate Edgar
Kate Edgar, previously Managing Editor at the Summit Books division of Simon and Schuster, began working with Oliver Sacks in 1983. She has served as editor and researcher on all of his books, and has been closely involved with various films and adaptations based on his work. As friend, assistant, and collaborator, she has accompanied Dr Sacks on many adventures around the world, clinical and otherwise.
Tags: birth, obstetric, chloroform, ether
Duration: 56 seconds
Date story recorded: 19-23 September, 2011
Date story went live: 02 October 2012
