Tag: Oliver Sacks
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In praise of swimming: From Benjamin Franklin to Oliver Sacks
James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) was not a physician, but many thought he was so-trained and referred to him as “Doctor” Franklin. After accepting an honorary doctorate from the University of St. Andrews in 1759, awarded for his experiments in electricity, people began referring to him as “Doctor,” a title he…
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Oliver Sacks and caring for the whole person
Margaret MarcumBoca Raton, Florida The neurologist Oliver Sacks—“The Poet Laureate of Medicine” according to The New York Times—developed an effective clinical method of treating the patient as a complete person rather than as a defective body part. He wrote that clinicians “are concerned not simply with a handful of ‘symptoms,’ but with a person, and…
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Defining medicine
Amira AthanasiosWalnut Creek, California, United States Defining Medicine. The bolded script screamed at me from a massive poster hung six stories high along the side of the university hospital on my first day of medical school. Like most millennials, I pursued medicine with a deep conviction to make a difference. Coming from a humanities background,…
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Oliver Sacks and seeing beyond synecdoche
Colleen DonnellyDenver, Colorado Thus she was a ‘moron’, ‘fool’, a ‘booby’, or so had appeared and so been called, throughout her whole life, but one with an unexpected, strangely moving, poetic power. Superficially she was a mass of handicaps and incapacities, with the intense frustrations and anxieties attendant on these; at this level she was, and…