Awakenings by Oliver Sacks
The fascinating tale of a group of patients who contracted sleeping sickness during the huge epidemic right after World War I is told in Awakenings, which served as the basis for the blockbuster feature picture. These people were written off as hopeless after being frozen for years in a trance-like state until 1969 when Dr Oliver Sacks gave them the then-new medicine L-DOPA, which had an amazing, explosive, “waking” effect. In his compelling case histories, Dr Sacks describes his patients’ lives and the remarkable changes that came with their reintroduction to a new environment.
Awakenings by Oliver Sacks
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A sleeping disorder called encephalitis lethargica had signs of Parkinsonism. Encephalitis lethargica, which appeared after World War I, spread to every country. Olive Sacks, a neurologist in the United States, worked to treat encephalitis lethargica patients’ symptoms. He treated a large number of patients with encephalitis lethargica and gave out doses of L-DOPA, a medication frequently used to treat Parkinson’s disease symptoms. Because most of the symptoms of encephalitis lethargica were comparable to those of Parkinson’s disease, he thought L-DOPA would help alleviate the condition’s symptoms. Oliver Sacks kept a detailed journal of his interactions with his patients while he was dispensing L-DOPA trials. He would document comparisons between the responses of the encephalitis lethargica patient before and after taking L-DOPA.
One of his well-known novels, Awakenings, was inspired by one of his recordings. Sacks wrote about his interactions with post-encephalitic patients who had taken L-DOPA in his book Awakenings. In the preface to his book, he describes Parkinsonism, encephalitis lethargica, and the effects of people who had the sleeping illness while drawing parallels between them. He then goes on to describe what it was like for the patients at Mount Carmel, a facility for those with mental illnesses. The remaining chapters of his book Awakenings read like journal entries, one for each of the patients he treated. He gave a description of the patients’ actions both before and after taking L-DOPA.
One of the many patients Sacks worked with at Mount Carmel, Frances D., was the subject of the first entry in his Awakenings series. He starts her account by describing how she had encephalitis at the age of fourteen, leaving her listless. He went on to say that she was becoming worse and that she was losing the ability to keep her muscles from getting stiff for extended periods of time. Sacks also talked about how her life had a time when everything appeared to be normal and she was even employed, but that time did not continue for very long. Her problems quickly became worse, necessitating her institutionalization.
