The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

Oliver Sacks describes himself as a “physician and naturalist,” and as he has written on matters as disparate as ferns, the periodic table, and encephalitis lethargica I am inclined to agree. It is this collection of case reports, however, that I consider to be his finest work. The book is divided into four thematic parts: “Losses,” “Excesses,” “Transports,” and “The world of the simple.” I discovered it in the sixth form, and it inspired me to study medicine and to practise—like Sacks—in the manner of James Purdon Martin, in which “patient and physician were co-equals . . . learning from and helping the other . . . …