The Forgetting (Magill’s Literary Annual 2002)
At a glance:
- Author: David Shenk
- First Published: 2001
- Type of Work: Medicine
- Principal Characters: Alois Alzheimer, Willem de Kooning, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Morris Friedell, Emil Kraepelin, Meta Neumann, Frederick Law Olmsted, Ronald Reagan, Jonathan Swift
- Genres: Nonfiction, Health and medicine
- Subjects: Memory, Medicine, Terminal illness or terminally ill, Diseases, Alzheimer’s disease
In his acknowledgments, David Shenk describes how he was inspired to research and, ultimately, to write about Alzheimer’s disease when he overheard in a local restaurant a conversation about a woman who no longer recognized her husband. Shenk imagined what it would be like to be that husband, and his emotional response has made what might have been a very dry scientific book about a medical problem a humane and engaging treatment of the subject.
Paradoxically, as improvements in living conditions and modern medicine have increased life expectancy in the developed world, there...
[The entire page is 1857 words long]
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