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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What was the public reaction to Sacks's first article about his leg?
(a) Confusion.
(b) Indifference.
(c) Indignation.
(d) He does not say.

2. Why did the staff nurse laugh at Sacks when he arrived in his room?
(a) Because he was joking about his cast.
(b) Because he told her a bawdy joke.
(c) Because he had packed fifty books and almost no clothes.
(d) Because he had difficulty walking.

3. What time of day did Sacks awake from his feverish delirium?
(a) Near midnight.
(b) Early morning.
(c) Evening.
(d) Late afternoon.

4. When the father and his son rescued Sacks, what had they been doing just a moment before?
(a) Hunting reindeer.
(b) Listening to the mass wafting up from the church.
(c) Sleeping.
(d) Searching for him.

5. What emotion did Sacks see several times on the unguarded face of the physiotherapist?
(a) Disgust.
(b) Sadness.
(c) Revulsion.
(d) Pain.

Short Answer Questions

1. What book does Sacks model his own book after?

2. Following the surgery, how did Sacks's cast fit his leg?

3. According to Sacks, why does he not end his story after his rescue?

4. The night before the operation, Sacks called up his family and friends. What did he tell them could happen if he were to die during the operation?

5. What book of the Bible does Sacks quote at the beginning of Chapter Three?

Short Essay Questions

1. During the first night in the hospital whom did Sacks see in his dream? How did Sacks live to imitate this person?

2. How does Sacks describe his first few steps? How might this description be applied to another time in life, one which has never been described?

3. At his arrival to the Odda hospital, what was Sacks's experience with Nurse Solveig? How did this exemplify the prostration he began to feel in the hospital?

4. How did Sacks move from the world of freedom into the world of the hospital? How might this have contributed to his thought that the operation on the following day would actually be an execution?

5. What does the detail from Sacks's journal explain? How does this excerpt capture the split between doctor and patient, which is captured in one person?

6. To whom did Sacks dedicate the book A Leg to Stand On? Why might he have chosen this person?

7. How did Sacks treat the warning sign about the bull? What does this reveal about his attitude?

8. What is anosognosis? What problem does this state present to medical researchers?

9. When Sacks was in the hospital, why did he hesitate to write about his experience? What mindset change enabled him to write?

10. What advice did Sacks's maiden aunt give him? How does this advice come across on the printed page?

(see the answer keys)

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