The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales Chapter Summary & Analysis - Part One: Chapter Four, The Man Who Fell out of Bed Summary

Part One: Chapter Four, The Man Who Fell out of Bed Summary and Analysis

As a young medical student Sacks is called to evaluate a new patient. The young man is admitted in the morning and seems quite calm and even tempered. Then in the afternoon after being awoken from a nap, the man becomes agitated and angry. Nurses find him sitting on the floor and are unable to calm him enough to return him to bed. When Sacks arrives and begins talking with the man, he discovers the patient views his own leg as that of someone else. In an attempt to throw the foreign leg out of his bed the man has thrown himself onto the floor and now cannot understand how to detach the stranger's leg from his own body. Dr. Sacks points out that the leg is the man's own. The young man is disbelieving but is unable to answer Sacks' question about the whereabouts of his proper leg if...
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