Awakenings (Drama) ( 1990) © 2000 by Raymond Weschler Major Characters Dr. Malcolm Sayer.................Robin Williams A very shy and gentle research neurologist (a person who studies the brain and nervous system) who comes to work at the Bainbridge Hospital, where there are many patients who have been in a sleep-like (comatose) state for 30 or more years. Eleanor Costello..................Julie Kavner A sweet nurse at the hospital who supports Dr. Sayer in his work with the hospital’s patients. Leonard Lowe......................Robert De Niro A patient who has been basically "asleep" at the hospital for three decades (from 1939 to 1969), who is dramatically woken by the use of an experimental drug that Dr. Sayer decides to try. Dr. Kaufman........................John Heard The head of the Neurology Department at the hospital who is very cynical about trying to wake the comatose patients. Mrs. Lowe..........................Ruth Nelson Leonard’s mom, who agrees to let Dr. Sayer try to wake her son. Lucy...............................Alice Drummond Another patient at the hospital, who has been asleep since 1926! Paula..............................Penelope Ann Miller The daughter of one of the hospital’s patients, who meets Leonard while visiting her father and begins a brief friendship with him. Plot Summary This is the true story of a well known neurologist who decided to use an experimental drug in the late 1960s to see if he could "wake" a group of patients that had fallen into a sleep-like state in the 1920s and 30s, due to a horrible disease that had spread mysteriously throughout the United States. In ways that are still not understood, this disease, caused by a virus, attacked the brains and nervous systems of the people who became its victims. In 1969, Dr. Malcolm Sayer (who, in real life, is the neurologist and author, Dr. Oliver Sacks), took a job as a clinical neurologist treating various patients at the Bainbridge Hospital in New York City, even though he had had no experience dealing with actual people. Sayer is a kind and very caring person who wanted to do more than just keep this mysterious group of patients alive, and thus with the encouragement of nurse Costello, he decides to experiment with a new drug called Dopamine, that had been approved for Parkinson’s disease (another illness that effects the nervous system), but had never been tried in patients that suffered from this so-called sleeping sickness. Amazingly, the first patient that Malcolm gives the drug to, a gentle middle-aged man named Leonard who had fallen asleep in 1939, slowly awakes from his 30 year sleep. Soon, Malcolm convinces the hospital that all the sleeping patients should be awoken with the Dopamine, and at first, it looks as if a genuine medical miracle has taken place. But of course, the patient责任编辑:yechenglu
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