The Island of the Colour-blind and Cycad Island
by:
Oliver Sacks (author)
Always fascinated by islands, Oliver Sacks is drawn to the Pacific by reports of the tiny atoll of Pingelap, with its isolated community of islanders born completely colourblind; and to Guam, where he investigates a puzzling paralysis endemic there for a century. Along the way, he re-encounters...
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Always fascinated by islands, Oliver Sacks is drawn to the Pacific by reports of the tiny atoll of Pingelap, with its isolated community of islanders born completely colourblind; and to Guam, where he investigates a puzzling paralysis endemic there for a century. Along the way, he re-encounters the beautiful, primitive island cycad trees -- and these become the starting point for a meditation on time and evolution, disease and adaptation, and islands both real and imagined.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780330350822 (033035082X)
Publish date: 1997-10-10
Publisher: Picador
Pages no: 361
Edition language: English
Category:
Non Fiction,
Travel,
Writing,
Essays,
Science,
Biology,
Health,
Medical,
Psychology,
Medicine,
Neuroscience,
Brain
I KNEW, KNEW that Oliver Sacks wouldn't give me informative details on the epidemiology of islands. His chatty, superficial, and self-absorbed style made me drop both his Hat and Awakenings books and give it 4 stars anyway, out of what, charity? But this one I bought new, with high hopes anyway, and...
There is a type of complete colorblindness, achromatopsia, where people do not have functional cones in their eyes and are almost blind in sunlight because of the sensitivity of the rods. Achromatopsia, unlike red-green colorblindness, is very rare. The island of Fuur and the island of Pingelap both...
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