There is a young boy named Leonard Lowe. He is a very smart boy who always gets good grades and he loves to read. He suddenly starts having a slip in his behavior and his schoolwork gets worse. This is because he contracted the disease encephalitis. .
The next scene is modern times for them, and takes place in the Bronx, in 1969. It takes place in a mental hospital where a man named Dr. Sawyer is looking for a job. He used to be a research doctor and now is going to work in this mental hospital, even though this is not his area of work. Dr. Sawyer really cares for the patients, and most of them have encephalitis, which is a disease, contracted from mosquitoes that put the patient in a catatonic state. That means they are in an unconscious state, but the heart works, but there is not any movement. Only certain things will bring out a reaction in these people. For instance, Dr. Sawyer can throw a ball at them and they react by catching the ball. When the ball comes they stick out their arm and catch it, but once the ball is caught, their arm's stay in that position.
One of the patients is Leonard. Dr. Sawyer takes a liking to him. He notices that a certain stimuli can bring forth a small reaction in the patients. If a person is being fed, and they play a piece of music that he likes, he will start eating on his own, but that is all he will do, nothing else.
A drug called L"Dopa is introduced to the market. L"Dopa is a drug originally for Parkinson's Disease. Dr Sawyer thinks that this drug could help cure the patients. He takes it to the board and they let him try the drug on only one patient, not all of them like he originally wanted. .
He chose Leonard to take the experimental drug. He gave him a small dosage. He mixes it in with some orange juice, but it doesn't do anything for him. They then up the dosage and mix it with milk, because they thought maybe the orange juice is neutralizing the medicinal ingredients.
