Oliver Sacks & Hildegard

I had to miss the class discussion over Hildegard of Bingen so I don’t know what went on but I have read about her before and I think it is pretty interesting. Oliver Sacks is a prominent professor of clinical neurology and the author of one of my favorite books, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. In this book he recounts case histories of patients with particularly bizarre neurological disorders and tells stories of individuals afflicted with perceptual and intellectual aberrations. In one chapter, Sacks focuses on Hildegard of Bingen. Although clearly not one of his patients, Hildegard and her visions are interesting to him because of their relevance to his experience with other patients. Sacks compares Hildegard to some of his patients such as an Indian girl who, while under his care in a hospital in the USA, had tumor-induced brain seizures which would put her in a calm, conscious, dreamy state where she experienced vivid visions of being home in India. He speaks of how there have been many individuals throughout history, such as Dostoievski, who experience visions and attribute them to spiritual or supernatural origins. He says that it often “never occurs to us at first that a vision might be ‘medical’” but he does not, however, devalue these visions as he continues on to say that “an organic basis” “does not detract in the least from their psychological or spiritual significance” and asks “[i]f God, or the eternal order, was revealed to Dostoievski in seizures, why should not other organic conditions serve as ‘portals’ to the beyond or the unknown?” (Sacks 130). In Hildegard’s specific case he remarks that a “careful consideration of these accounts and figures leaves no room for doubt concerning their nature: they were indisputably migrainous, and they illustrate, indeed, many of the varieties of visual aura….” (Sacks 168). In a medical analysis of one specific vision where Hildegard describes falling stars that turn to black coals, he confidently classifies this as a “shower of phosphenes… being succeeded by a negative scotoma” and then that “a second scotoma follows in the wake of the original scintillation” (Sacks 169). I have really no idea what that means but it sounds like he knows what he is talking about. He attributes these visions as being “instrumental in directing her towards a life of holiness and mysticism” and says that they are a “unique example of the manner in which a physiological event, banal, hateful or meaningless to the vast majority of people, can become, in a privileged consciousness, the substrate of a supreme ecstatic inspiration” (Sacks 169). What do you guys think about this? I think it is interesting that Sacks can account for her visions with concrete medical causes yet (similarly to Dostoievski) does not rule out that, still, these could have been induced by God or some other higher power. Do you agree that this is possible? In case you are not familiar with Oliver Sacks, it is important to note that he is one of the most prominent and most credible experts on neurological issues and other matters in his field. Despite that, however, and based on your reading of Hildegard, do you agree with his idea and, if so, does it make you reconsider anything in the reading or think about anything she says in a different way? Do you think its possible that her visions could have been caused medically and still be divine?


Sacks, Oliver. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. 5. New York, NY: Touchstone, 1985. Print.