ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the lives of famous case studies from the history of neuropsychology. The history of neuroscience is punctuated by reports and case studies of unfortunate individuals who – through accident or, occasionally, design – sustained damage to a region of their brain. The face of Phineas P Gage, the man who inadvertently paved the way for much of modern neuroscience, was revealed to the public. The profound humanity and humbling compassion of Oliver Wolf Sacks’s writings leave us with an important and timely legacy: to remember that behind the disease, case study or data point lies a person, a human being grappling with their unique and often distressing reality. Oliver Sacks began his career in the 1960s working with patients suffering from neurological damage when, following his medical degree at Oxford and a time at Middlesex Hospital in London, he moved to Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco.
