![]() ![]() The 1990 film version, starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams, was nominated for three Oscars including best picture. These patients became the subjects of Awakenings, which later inspired a play by Harold Pinter – A Kind of Alaska. He recognised them as survivors of the encephalitis epidemic that had swept the world from 1916 to 1927, and treated them with a then-experimental drug, L-dopa, which enabled them to recover. Many patients had spent decades in strange, frozen states, like human statues. Sacks came across the patients in 1966 while working as a consulting neurologist for Beth Abraham hospital, a chronic care hospital, in the Bronx. ![]() ![]() Awakenings was based on his work with patients treated with a drug that woke them up after years in a catatonic state. ![]() Sacks was the author of several books about unusual medical conditions, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat and The Island of the Colourblind. But my luck has run out – a few weeks ago I learned that I have multiple metastases in the liver.” The London-born academic, whose book Awakenings inspired the Oscar-nominated film of the same name, wrote: “A month ago, I felt that I was in good health, even robust health. ![]()
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