1. read and/ or watch awakenings. what is your reaction to it? (¡°yo didn¡¯t wake a thing , you awoke a person.¡) how does it portray medicine? what ethical issues are raised
Awakenings is based on a true story by Oliver Sacks about a doctor played by Robins Williams, whose experimental drug treatment (L-Dopa) brings a groups of catatonic patient back to life again. However, this miracle did not last and the patient returned back to their original state.
To understand the medical issues raised from this piece of work, we should first take a look at the background of patient at Brainbridge. This is found in the introduction to Dr Oliver Sacks¡¯ book while a dramatized scene in Penny Marshall¡¯s movie portrays the emotions behind the sickness.d
In the early 20th century, a new ailment swept through Europe extending to United States. ¡±Encephalitis Lethargica¡± often called the sleeping sickness, is as it¡¯s Latinate form suggests a Hydra with a thousands head. The victims who survived the initial trauma of the illness displayed an enormous array of symptoms. As Dr Sacks wrote in his Prologue, the range of ¡°heads¡± included misdiagnoses of ¡°epidemic delirium, epidemic schizophrenia, epidemic Parkisonism, epidemic disseminated sclerosis, atypical rabies, and atypical poliomyelitis¡.etc¡±
The epidemic was apparent and the victims were certainly atypical. Such victims often displayed involuntary and compulsive movements as well as some distortions and rigidity. This ranges from simple spasms to yawning and cursing. The darkness of sleep consumed many survivors in the early 1920s. In Sack¡¯s book, he wrote as patient ¡°passed into a timeless state an eventless stasis, which deprived them of all sense of history and happening ¡°. ¡° Encysted ¡°, and ¡°cocooned¡± in a realm of sleep, the patients at Brainbrigde were alive and human, yet far from the conscious sense of awareness we perpetually feel. ¡°
Awakenings celebrates the deep down joy of life and the healing exchange that can take place between doctor and patient...
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