Awakenings--which inspired the major motion picture--is the remarkable story of a group of patients who contracted sleeping-sickness during the great epidemic just after World War I. Frozen for decades in a trance-like state, these men and women were given up as hopeless until 1969, when Dr. Oliver Sacks gave them the then-new drug L-DOPA, which had an astonishing, explosive, "awakening" effect. Dr. Sacks recounts the moving case histories of his patients, their lives, and the extraordinary transformations which went with their reintroduction to a changed world.
- ISBN10 0375704051
- ISBN13 9780375704055
- Publish Date 5 October 1999 (first published 29 January 1976)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Vintage
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 464
- Language English
- URL https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780375704055