Awakenings - Zeit des Erwachens

Between 1916 and 1927, a worldwide epidemic of the so-called European sleeping sickness, a brain disease, raged, leaving nearly five million dead and countless severely disabled individuals. Neuropsychologist Oliver Sacks encountered survivors of this epidemic in a hospital near New York in the late 1960s and began treating them with a newly discovered medication, L-Dopa. The effects of the medication were overwhelming—people who had been "frozen" for decades suddenly awoke to life. In his book, Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of these individuals and the almost unimaginable consequences of dopamine treatment.