Part Three: Chapter Sixteen, Incontinent Nostalgia Summary and Analysis

Sacks takes a brief moment to tell the story of Rose R. Rose is a post-encephalitic patient who suffers reminiscence after receiving L-Dopa treatment. Sacks notes that patients receiving L-Dopa often experience reminiscence. Rose has been in a type of trance for the last twenty-four years due to Parkinsonism. When given L-Dopa, she slowly begins to wake up. At first she begins to recover speech and psychomotor functioning. Rose then begins experience an increase libido which makes her take great delight in smutty stories and jokes. Rose is surprised to discover that she still recalls such things after forty years. Sacks reports that research shows it is often common for a single note of a song or, more commonly, a smell to prompt a recollection of long buried memories. These memories...