Today is the birthday of neurologist and prolific writer Oliver Sacks (1933-). Born in London and currently practicing in New York, he has spent over 30 years studying the relationship between body and soul, the mysteries of the brain and "wholeness of life," what he has called "neuroanthropology."

His deeply-moving autobiography, Awakenings, made into an 1990 movie with Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, chronicled Dr. Sacks's treatment of the drug L-Dopa, a precursor of the transmitter dopamine, to temporarily awaken zombie-like patients after 40 or 50 years of "sleeping."

"No 'orthodox' presentation, in terms of numbers, series, grading of effects, et cetera, could have conveyed the historical reality of the experience," he said.

Giving hope to others for over four decades. Even if only temporarily. "Hope springs eternal in the human breast; Man never is, but always to be blest," wrote poet Alexander Pope in An Essay on Man.

In this, and all of his writings, Dr. Sacks challenged his peers to look past a patient's mental disorders to see humanity. Giving voice to his patients's experiences, he explored what it was like to be unable to communicate with the rest of the world.

Called “the poet laureate of medicine” by The New York Times, Sacks celebrated the strength of the human spirit and how we can, with love and care, emerge despite disability or breakdown.

"People will make a life in their own terms, whether they are deaf or colorblind or autistic or whatever." Sacks said in 1998. "And their world will be quite as rich and interesting and full as our world."

Look at life with love and see what emerges.