A life well lived

‘I cannot say there is no vanity in making this funeral oration of myself, but I hope it is not a misplaced one,’ wrote David Hume on the eve of his death in 1776, under the title, ‘My Own Life’. It is with this same title that, accepting the inevitable progression of metastatic cancer in his liver at the age of 81, Oliver Sacks paid tribute to his favourite philosopher. Like Hume, the charge of vanity was not unfamiliar to Sacks when writing about his achievements and the shapes of his inner life. In a way rare for a doctor, Sacks was prepared to admit that vanity is part of the medical endeavour: a restless pursuit to know the goings-on of your mind, to understand your heart, your lungs and your legs, to look again and again and again.

Sacks made peace with vanity in 1984 when he wrote a case history of himself.