Autobiography oliver sacks neurologist los angeles

From the early roots of a pure subspecialty in the early 19th century to now, it would be hard to identify another neurologist who has touched as many lives. He did it all outside of the mainstream of traditional academic or private practice neurology. He forged his own path. Born in in London, his early life was an intellectual cauldron of family and friends.

His mother was a surgeon and anatomist.

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His father was a general practitioner who taught Sacks that every patient was a special story. His aunts, uncles and cousins included inventors, chemists, United Nations diplomats, Nobel laureates, celebrated cartoonists, directors, writers, etc. His two best childhood friends were Jonathan Miller and Eric Korn. Miller trained as a neurologist, but went on to become an acclaimed opera director, actor, author, television presenter, humorist and documentarian.

Korn was a polymath who loved science, theater, poetry and literary criticism. Sacks was sent to a boarding school in the country, where a cruel headmaster reigned.

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He went on to college at Oxford, where he first encountered his literary mentor, W. After medical school at Oxford and an internship at Middlesex Hospital in London, Sacks came to America with his motorcycle. He attempted a career in neuropathology, but clumsy hands held him back, and he moved to his passion, clinical medicine and writing. His first book, Migraine , was published in He interwove the neurological history of migraine with his case studies and his own migrainous experiences.

While working at a chronic hospital in the late s, Sacks cared for patients with postencephalitic parkinsonism, who had been left for custodial care.