The Island of the Colour-blind - Oliver Sacks

Having read and very much enjoyed his famous book 'The man who mistook his wife for a hat', I was pleased when Liz offered to lend me another Oliver Sacks book. 

Although more of a travel book, the writing style was easy and yet again I found myself please to be able to keep up and understand the concepts described.

Island of the Colour-blind is actually a documentation of two island trips made in the early 1990s, something Sacks admits in his preface. 

As you'd expect from a celebrated neurologist, the first trip is a study trip to the islands of Micronesia, and in particular to Pingelap.  The tiny atoll is home to an isolated group of people who suffer from hereditary colour blindness; achromatopsia.  Taking along with him a colleague who also suffers from the strange affliction, Sacks documents the ways the population deal with the lack of colour and inability to see at all in strong sunlight.  He looks at the scientific study that has taken place, and continues to do so.

The second trip is to the American territory of Guam, and again another disease - this time, Lytico-Bogig; but also finding time to take in some of his beloved cycads and ferns.  The Lytico-Bogig disease is another isolated disease, but this time cause is completely unknown, and with many patients there are completely different symptoms.

In comparison to the previous Sacks book that I read, this one was as engaging or as enjoyable.  Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy it but not as much.  It seemed very ephemeral, and lacking in detail or substance; I was left wanting more information about the sufferers of the two diseases, and certainly would have liked more about the cycads (including more pictures).  I ended up on the internet looking for much more detail about much of it.

Perhaps this due to the fact that this is 'from the major television series', and I suspect a bit of an after thought.  Shame, it could have been so much more.

Lent to me by Liz Jones
May 2010