It turns out they responded very differently than Parkinson’s patients. During the time that he was caring for them, a new drug, L-DOPA, began to be used with great effect on Parkinson’s patients, and since these patients symptoms were similar, Saks, and other attempted to use the drug with them with dramatic, and ultimately, troubling, effects.Īfter introductory chapters on Parkinsonism, sleeping sickness, Mount Carmel, and L-Dopa, he describes the patient history of twenty patients who he treated with this drug. Oliver Sacks, in this book chronicles his work with a group of such patients, some institutionalized for as long as forty years in Mount Carmel Hospital in New York. Many lived as prisoners in their own bodies, limited in movement and speech. A number of patients experienced symptoms of Parkinsonism, leading to increasing paralysis and necessitating institutionalization. Summary: Chronicles the experience of post-encephalitis patients existing as prisoners in their own bodies in a trance-like state, who, when treated with L-DOPA, experienced dramatic “awakenings” nearly always followed by debilitating side effects, often resulting with withdrawal of the drug, and a return to their former state.įrom 1916 to 1927, there was an epidemic of encephalitis lethargica, or “sleeping sickness.” The sickness often resulted in a period of profound lethargy, sometimes ending in a return to normal or nearly normal life.
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