Awakenings

Book excerpt: The classic account of survivors of the sleeping-sickness during the great epidemic just after World War I—and their return to the world after decades of “sleep.” • “One of the most beautifully composed and moving works of our time" (The Washington Post) from the distinguished neurologist and the national bestselling author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Awakenings—which inspired the major motion picture starring Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams—is the remarkable story of a group of patients who contracted sleeping-sickness during the great epidemic just after World War I. Frozen for decades in a trance-like state, these men and women were given up as hopeless until 1969, when Dr. Oliver Sacks gave them the then-new drug L-DOPA, which had an astonishing, explosive, "awakening" effect. Dr. Sacks recounts the moving case histories of his patients, their lives, and the extraordinary transformations which went with their reintroduction to a changed world.