Whitney FI’s Reviews > The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales > Status Update

Perhaps there is a philosophical as well as a clinical lesson here: that in Korsakov’s, or dementia, or other such catastrophes, however great the organic damage and Humean dissolution, there remains the undiminished possibility of reintegration by art, by communion, by touching the human spirit: and this can be preserved in what seems at first a hopeless state of neurological devastation.

I can’t tell you what I find wrong,” I replied, “but I’ll say what I find right. You are a wonderful musician. What I would prescribe, in a case such as yours, is a life which consists entirely of music. Music has been the center, now make it the whole, of your life." And this, mercifully, held to the end—for despite the gradual advance of his disease, Dr. P. lived and taught music to the last days of his life.

With the rise of neuroscience and its wonders, it is even more important now to preserve the personal narrative, to see every patient as a unique being with his own history and strategies for adapting and surviving. Though our knowledge and insights may evolve, the phenomenology of human health remains fairly constant, and case history, careful, detailed descriptions of individual patients, can never become obsolete.