*Updated and revised edition with a new epilogue and interview with Michael J Fox*
'Engagingly written informative often funny' Daily Telegraph 'Has the hard-boiled style of
a Raymond Chandler novel' The Times 'T hink Oliver Sacks meets Gregory House with a
sprinkling of a hypochondriac's worst nightmare' Sunday Times What is it like to try to heal
the body when the mind is under attack? In this gripping and illuminating book Dr Allan Ropper
reveals the extraordinary stories behind some of the life-altering afflictions that he and his
staff are confronted with at the Neurology Unit of Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Like Alice in Wonderland Dr Ropper inhabits a place where absurdities abound: a sportsman who
starts spouting gibberish an undergraduate who suddenly becomes psychotic a mother who has to
decide whether a life locked inside her own head is worth living. How does one begin to treat
such cases to counsel people whose lives may be changed forever? Dr Ropper answers these
questions by taking the reader into a world where lives and minds hang in the balance.
