From a study of what he calls 'phantoms'
 

Oliver Sachs' work.
   
 
 

 
   
 

There are times when a sensory overload
is no good.
   
 


Sorry, but this title is by me. I like the title of his work Awakenings, but not the one used in his work that I am currently reading (hence the title I have given it above).  
 

   
   
 
There is often a certain confusion about phantoms - whether they should occur, or not; whether they are 'real,' or not. The literature is confusing, but patients are not - and they clarify matters by describing different sorts of phantoms [to Doctor Sacks I can say, from my own experience, that illusions, or 'phantoms' if that is what you prefer to call them, are quite real at the time; and can be a break away from reality, if it has become too grim to experience].
     
 

Many, (but not all) patients.... suffer 'phantom pain,' or pain in the phantom [and here I think Sachs is referring back to what he earlier called 'proprioceptive illusion'].
   
  [And this pain can fluctuate on mood, as well as on its own timescale].
   
  [Thank you Doctor Sacks, for having the 'insight' (notice my use of that word); though my own illness I can relate to the Lost Mariner better than I can to the others. The work quoted above is not from the Lost Mariner].
 
 

A review by the New York Magazine:

Dr. Sacks's most absorbing book... His tales are so compelling that many of them serve as eerie metaphors not only for the condition of modern medicine but of modern man.
 
 

 

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