A Leg to Stand On

Oliver Sacks

Sep 2020 · Kuthengiswe ngu-Vintage

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From the bestselling author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat • Here the doctor becomes the patient as Dr. Sacks chronicles the mountaineering accident which left him with the uncanny feeling of being "legless," and raises profound questions of the physical basis of identity.

"One of the great clinical writers of the 20th century." —The New York Times Book Review

In A Leg to Stand On, it is Sacks himself who is the patient: an encounter with a bull on a desolate mountain in Norway has left him with a severely damaged leg. But what should be a routine recuperation is actually the beginning of a strange medical journey when he finds that his leg uncannily no longer feels like part of his body. Sacks’s brilliant description of his crisis and eventual recovery is not only an illuminating examination of the experience of patienthood and the inner nature of illness and health but also a fascinating exploration of the physical basis of identity. 

This 1984 classic is now available in an expanded edition with a new foreword, written by Kate Edgar, executive director of the Oliver Sacks Foundation.

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Dr. Oliver Sacks spent more than fifty years working as a neurologist and writing books about the neurological predicaments and conditions of his patients, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, and Awakenings. The New York Times referred to him as "the poet laureate of medicine," and over the years, he received many awards, including honors from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Royal College of Physicians. His memoir, On the Move, was published shortly before his death in August 2015.