An Anthropologist on Mars

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What does it mean to be normal? What does it mean to be handicapped? How would you feel if one day you woke up and realized that you had lost your ability to see, hear, walk, or speak? There are people who are born with disabilities and others who obtain them over time. These very disabilities effect the way people look at both themselves and the world around them. Disabilities are not just physical. There are many mental disabilities as well. Different doctors who specify in different areas Work with people to find ways to help them with their disabilities. Oliver Sacks, a Neurologist, Who is also a professor in neurology has published books on his experience with patients. Oliver Sacks is perhaps best known for his collections of case histories from the far borderlands of neurological experience, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and An Anthropologist on Mars, in which he describes patients struggling to live with conditions ranging from Tourette’s syndrome to autism, parkinsonism, musical hallucination, epilepsy, phantom limb syndrome, schizophrenia, retardation, and Alzheimer’s disease. In An Anthropologist On Mars, By Oliver Sacks, Sacks reads letters from People who have become handicapped. He then tries to obtain information on their previous histories in order to make sense of their disabilities from making sure that they actually have a disability, defining the disability, to finding the root of the disability and seeing whether or not he can help them and how. Three specific Cases in An Anthropologist On Mars, are “The Case Of The Colorblind Painter”, “The Last Hippie” and “To see and Not See”. In “The Case Of The Colorblind Painter” a 65 year old painter, Mr. Jonathan I, Writes a letter to Sacks explaining to him that after an accident he lost his ability to perceive color. In detail Jonathan explains to
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