Oliver Sacks is a neurologist of wide lay reading, a man of humane eloquence, a genuine communicator aware of the damnable rift that subsists between doctor and patient. He deals with what can only be termed the metaphysical implications of a somatic crisis in his own life and he points the way towards a more holistic approach to what, to the orthopaedist, is a matter of crass carpentry...

He had to learn to walk again, and he didn't want know how to do it. 'It wasn't "my" leg I was walking with, but a huge, clumsy prosthesis ... a leg-shaped cylinder of chalk.' Then there was a miracle. Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto came into his head, it seemed to stimulate an inner 'motor' music, a 'kinetic melody', and the leg suddenly felt alive again, it became his.