The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales Chapter Summary & Analysis - Part Two: Chapter Eleven, Cupid's Disease Summary

Part Two: Chapter Eleven, Cupid's Disease Summary and Analysis

At the age of eighty-eight, Natasha K. is suddenly overcome by a feeling of extreme well-being and flirtiness. She self-diagnosis herself with Cupid's Disease, or syphilis. In her younger years Natasha worked in a brothel and feels that she could have caught the disease then but it has lain dormant all these years. A test of her spinal fluid reveals she is correct. When the subject of treatment is broached, Natasha is a little uncertain. She is enjoying her new found freedom but does not want the disease to progress further. A course of penicillin is prescribed to kill the spirochetes which spread the disease, but there is nothing that can be done to reverse her cerebral changes. So Natasha will be able to continue living her flirty lifestyle.

In the postscript to this chapter, Sacks discusses another patient who would draw a more detailed picture than the one...
(read more)