American Scientist

On August 30, 2015, the world lost the prolific and acclaimed neuroscientist-author Oliver Sacks. Renowned for valuing the specifics of individual patients over the larger generalities of case studies, Sacks was also known for his desire to write books instead of peer-reviewed papers. Indeed, even as his health declined, his drive to write only increased, and he released a memoir, On the Move, just months before his death. Kate Edgar, his assistant, is reported to have said that Sacks “would likely die ‘with fountain pen in hand.'”

As Sacks so greatly preferred to focus on the stories of individual lives, it seems a fitting tribute to revisit what has been said about his books, and what he has had to say about the books of other authors, in American Scientist.

• Sacks’s books have been recommended reading in our pages (online as well as in print) by scientists from diverse fields, including linguist Derek Bickerton, paleontologist Richard Fortney, and psychologist Lise Abrams.
• His 2008 book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain was reviewed by neuroscientist Norman M. Weinberger, who specializes in auditory learning and memory.
• Sacks wrote the foreward to the 2001 book The Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civilized Mind, by Elkhonon Goldberg.
• His insights on classic figures in science, from Archimedes to James Watson, appeared in the 1999 book On Giants' Shoulders: Great Scientists and their Discoveries—from Archimedes to DNA, by Melvyn Bragg.
• Shorter pieces of Sacks’s writing appeared in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2000, The Best American Science Writing 2000 and The Best American Science Writing 2005.
• Sacks was known to be an avid advocate for chemistry, and warmly recommended the 2000 book A Chemical History Tour: Picturing Chemistry from Alchemy to Modern Molecular Science, by Arthur Greenberg.
• Indeed, in his 2001 book Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, Sacks connected his early interest in chemistry with his later scientific career. Reviewer Pierre Laszlo says the book coveys “the sense of wonder of a little boy facing nature. In evoking convincingly a child's thought processes and language, Sacks achieves a magical retrieval of Time Lost and shares with the reader his elation at this feat.”

• In a 2001 column, Nobel laureate Roald Hoffmann, who wrote a column for American Scientist for many years, cites Sacks’s childhood experiences with chemistry to exemplify the attractiveness of oxidative states. He writes, “Think of the sky blue color of chromium (II) versus the violet or green of chromium (III) salts, the four distinctly colored oxidation states of vanadium. Oliver Sacks writes beautifully of the attraction of these colors for a boy starting out in chemistry. And not only boys.”
• Hoffmann also later wrote about Sacks as an example of scientists successfully writing for the public. In his 2006 column “The Metaphor, Unchained,” Hoffmann argued that writing for nonspecialists in fact improves a scientist’s own research, something that seems likely to have resonated with Sacks’s own experiences.

But Sacks still remains widely known for one of his earlier books, Migraine. In “A Perspective on the Migraine Mind,” neurologist and headache researcher Stephen D. Silberstein recounts Sacks’ early experiences with the condition:

Migraines are often preceded or accompanied by visual hallucinations. Arriving suddenly out of a clear blue sky, a migraine aura—a set of shimmering, flashing, weird perceptions—is bound to seem inexplicable, even frightening. This was certainly the case for eminent neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose first migraine occurred when he was only three or four years old. The incident left an indelible memory:

“I was playing in the garden when a brilliant, shimmering light appeared to my left—dazzlingly bright, almost as bright as the sun. It expanded, becoming an enormous shimmering semicircle stretching from the ground to the sky, with sharp zigzagging borders and brilliant blue and orange colors. Then, behind the brightness, came a blindness, an emptiness in my field of vision, and soon I could see almost nothing on my left side. I was terrified—what was happening? My sight returned to normal in a few minutes, but those were the longest minutes I had ever experienced.“

Fortunately for young Oliver, his mother immediately recognized the condition. As a migraine sufferer herself, and a trained physician, she could assure him he would soon be good as new. She explained he had experienced “a sort of disturbance like a wave” passing across a part of his brain, temporarily distorting his senses.Years later, Oliver Sacks wrote a book, Migraine, and a number of related articles that greatly increased the public understanding of migraine—not just the headache but also the aura and other characteristic symptoms—as an illness, and a fairly common one at that. According to figures from the World Health Organization, as many as 11 percent of all adults suffer from this condition, which affects their quality of life and interferes with work and social activities. The toll on the affected individual amounts to an estimated 1.3 years lost to disability over a lifetime.

A review of Migraine: Understanding a Common Disorder appeared in the January-February 1986 issue of American Scientist. It is reprinted in its entirety here:

It is a challenging task to describe in a small book a subject so complex that it permeates not only scientific medical writing but also art, poetry, prose, and biblical writings. In this regard, migraine is similar to epilepsy. This book, like any other, should be judged on how well it accomplishes its objectives. It seeks to reach three groups: those with migraine and "their physicians," students and investigators of the subject, and general readers. The book is well written and entertaining, particularly in its turns of phrase and historic background. It therefore accomplishes its objectives relative to patients with migraine and general readers. I would have felt more comfortable if the author had not included investigators and physicians who are treating migraine among the groups he hopes to educate, since the lay and scientific groups require different types of information, and the physiologic, pharmacologic, and therapeutic aspects of migraine should be discussed in more detail for the latter. It was disappointing, also, that despite a strong psychologic leaning in most of the book, the author is quite permissive in considering the use of narcotic drugs in migraine. As a migraine sufferer and a long-time headache treater, I have never found it necessary to use narcotics in a single case of true migraine. The dangers in using such drugs for any chronic condition are obvious. Not much new is presented concerning the scientific aspects of migraine, but considering the audience to whom the book is really directed, this should not be regarded too critically. In the final analysis, anyone having any interest in migraine will profit from and enjoy reading this book. —Desmond S. O’Doherty, Neurology, Georgetown University Hospital