'Is this your medical discretion?'

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How the patients of Awakenings felt

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'Is this your medical discretion?'

Oliver Sacks Scientist

	Views	Duration
131. Writing, dictating, the last of the Awakenings case...	294	02:37
132. The death of my mother	388	03:08
133. Additions to Awakenings	260	03:04
134. Awakenings proof and WH Auden's compulsions	275	02:37
135. Awakenings: not a murmur from the medical press	246	03:05
136. The dangers of publishing	268	00:32
137. 'Is this your medical discretion?'	250	01:45
138. How the patients of Awakenings felt	445	02:14
139. The only changes to Awakenings for the disgruntled...	279	00:18
140. Approached by Duncan Dallas of Yorkshire TV	374	01:15

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There was an incident in 1970, when the sister of one of my patients at Beth Abraham came to me holding The New York Daily News and said, 'Is this your medical discretion?' And I realised that what had happened was that The Lancet had released my medical Letter to the Editor to Reuters or A&P [sic], and it had been picked up by newspapers everywhere. The... my letter was about the patient whom... who inspired Harold Pinter’s play, A Kind of Alaska. The... now there was nothing bad in the letter, it was sort of full of interest. It could not have been recognised by anyone other than a family member, or someone who... who knew the patient very well. This was a woman who had had the encephalitis very acutely in 1926 and went into some strange trance-like state for 43 years, until she was awakened in '69. But this made me very nervous.

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: 'Is this your medical discretion?'

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: Reuters, The New York Daily News, The Lancet, A Kind of Alaska, Harold Pinter

Duration: 1 minute, 45 seconds

Date story recorded: September 2011

Date story went live: 02 October 2012