Oliver Sacks agrees (or is it the other way around?)

For the past few days I have been haphazardly picking at Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat (a book I first started reading in 2003).

Last night, while reading the section on Tourette's Syndrome I was struck by his discussion of a concept that seemed to parallel something I posted about a few days ago - our inclination to overlook concepts/ideas that aren't appropriately named.  Of course, Sacks's take on concepts without names, or johnny-come-lately re-remembered names, is a little more elegant than mine.

The day after seeing Ray, it seemed to me that I noticed three Touretters in the street in downtown New York.  I was confounded, for Tourette's syndrome was said to be excessively rare.  It had an incidence, I had read, of one in a million, yet I had apparently seen three examples in an hour.  I was thrown into a turmoil of bewilderment and wonder: was it possible that had been overlooking this all the time, either not seeing such patients or vaguely dismissing them as 'nervous', 'cracked', 'twitchy'?  Was it possible that everyone had been overlooking them?  Was it possible that Tourette's was not a rarity, but rather common - a thousand times more common, say, than previously supposed?  

Sacks also includes a nice footnote with another example of such an instance.

A very similar situation happened with muscular dystrophy, which was never seen until Duchenne described it in the 1850s.  By 1860, after his original description, many hundreds of cases had been recognised and described, so much so that Charcot said: "How come that a disease so common, so widespread, and so recognisable at a glance - a disease which has doubtless always existed - how come it is only recognised now?  Why did we need M. Duchenne to open our eyes?"

I can't help but wonder how many unnamed concepts are floating about whose naming would be of great use in my day to day life?

A Few Quick Notes 135

-In the past few days the temperatures have really dropped. It seems that we are now at about -15, and are scheduled to stay in this range for at least another couple of hours. More importantly, we are scheduled to get our first substantial snowfall as of tomorrow afternoon. As I plan on working on school work at the dining room table I should have a pretty good view of the proceedings.

-There are a few fire trucks that have been in front of the building next to mine for some time now. As there doesn’t seem to be too much action and no new trucks have come in the past twenty minutes I feel that I can safely rule out fire as a possibility. Hopefully nothing too serious has transpired.

-On Thursday night Steven and I went to a talk by Oliver Sacks. In many ways it was exactly what I expected, neurological problems as they relate to perception and interaction with music. Unfortunately, I can’t really tell you too much about the talk as I seem to have fallen asleep for the middle section.

While question and answer sessions after talks are usually quite unpleasant this one was particularly bad. The first individual to ask a question attempted to show the breadth of his reading and depth of his intellect only to fall flat on his face. Unfortunately a few other also asked rather broad and pointless questions about the nature of music and creativity, something that clearly isn’t in Sacks’ area of expertise (and he deserves credit for willingness not to provide a phony answer). The other type of question, which I presume occur wherever Sacks’ talks, is the desire for an on-the-spot diagnosis for a friend or family member’s condition. Fortunately there was only one of this latter type of question as was totally inappropriate and impossible to answer given the circumstances.

-After the talk I went up to Thomson House for the Mustache and Cleavage Party. I was amazed to find that I was by no means the only one with a mustache. Also, several people showed up with cleavage in tow.

-Hopefully within the next few days I will be able to buy a low cost thermometer and be able to provide temperature readings from our apartment. At the moment I am sure that my room is a shockingly low temperature (so cold that I am using my windowsill as fridge substitute. I may have to try to warm things up once Nithum returns as I know that he likes things a little warmer than I do.

-Several days ago my alarm clock crapped out. It seems that the radio function and the projection function still work, but that the clock and alarm components are completely non-functional. This has meant that I have been reliant on my iPod and speakers to function as an alarm clock. The problem with the set-up is that I seem to sleep through the single beep about 1 out of 2 time. For instance, my nap this evening went from about half an hour to an hour and a half without my even knowing what was going on. Things like this can’t happen too many more time. Maybe I will have to get some motivation and try to buy a new clock tomorrow.