The Humanization of the Diseased

Danielle G 2 October 2011

English 24 Professor Falcone

The Humanization of the Diseased

For most, whether they are doctors or regular working professionals, when one is diagnosed with a disease or illness that regards them as the "other," i.e., one who does not have the usual and same physical and psychological faculties that everyone else is born with, they are generally stripped of a humanity that we all so fiercely cling to. In reading An Anthropologist on Mars it is impossible to not have an empathetic view of the patients that Oliver Sacks so humanly describes. He gives the reader a real and human picture of the studied patients and this makes it impossible not to identify in some way with these people who can be so callously classified as the "other". The two studies of Mr. I and Greg that Oliver Sacks wrote about most profoundly touched me because it showed that life and living that life cannot be so easily classified as what is normal or not. He also shows the reader that even though a person might be handicapped by accident or disease, that they still retain their own humanity.

In the cases of Mr. I, one is shown that even when life is disrupted, adaptations occur that allow a person to still live a fulfilling life and can at times surmount their once previously valued life. Mr. I made a living as an artist and lead a life filled with passion for the arts. Sacks details how he was familiar and intimate with a various number of painters and could describe the hues of his artists' palette in amazing detail and with amazing clarity. Due to a car accident, his brain's ability to literally "color his world" was lost. Sacks explains the medical portion of it, but he also details it on the human level; that this man, whose life was indeed color and the use of it and the observation of its beauty, was radically changed in an instant and he now was truly colorblind. What truly is striking about this story is how Mr. I take his newly imposition "disability" and instead of it changing his life, he changes his life to accept it and because of this he profoundly grows as an artist. Mr. I naturally needed to get used to this new world in which everything was colorless and with greyish tones and unfamiliar contours. However, he eventually does and is excited at this newly found vision; that he alone is gifted now in seeing the world in this new and unusual light. In losing his normal vision, he has in turn gained a more profound vision not only in sight, but for his life. By the end of this transformation, Mr. I's vision is restored not in the normal sense, but in the sense that he accepts the vision he has and the insight he has gained. This is most telling when