Neurology pioneer and bestselling author Oliver Sacks, who gained worldwide acclaim for humanizing people with brain disorders by highlighting their resiliency despite their odd conditions, died in New York on Sunday. He was 82 years old.
Kate Edgar, Sacks' assistant, confirmed the passing of the "poet laureate of medicine" in his Manhattan home over the weekend. She said that the cause of death is cancer.
Sacks first announced that he was suffering from cancer through an Op-Ed essay in February. He said that a previous melanoma that began in his eye metastasized to his liver and that the disease has already become terminal.
In his essay, Sacks wrote that it was up to him to decide how he was going to live the remaining months of his life, stating that he wished to live in the most productive way he could.
"I want and hope in the time that remains ... to achieve new levels of understanding and insight," Sacks wrote.
Sacks spent most of his life as a neurology professor at the Bronx's Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He also taught at the New York University School of Medicine and the Columbia University.
It was through his books, however, that Sacks achieved his most lasting acclaim, producing 13 works that helped researchers have a better understanding of the symptoms of brain disorders. His book, entitled The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales, became a bestseller in 1986 and is now considered to be one of the most popular pieces of literature in the field of neurology.
Fans of Sack's writing note that his style combined the sensibility of a novelist, the accuracy of a clinician and the empathy of a friend. His contributions helped make information on neurological conditions more accessible and understandable to even the most casual readers.
Sack's popularity as a pioneer in neurology became more evident as his writings were adapted for stage and film and over a million copies of his books remain in print in the United States. The author also received an average of about 10,000 letters every year.
During his lifetime, Sacks described his writings as case histories, clinical tales, pathographies and neurological novels. Subjects featured in his books included a blind woman referred to as Madeleine J., who believed her hands were "lumps of dough" and a radio operator on a submarine referred to as Jimmie G., who suffered from three decades of amnesia.
Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales was based on a man referred to as Dr. P, who mistook his own wife for a hat. Sacks noted that the brain of the patient lost its ability to understand what he was seeing with his eyes.
