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A Famous Hallucination: Ahab's Phantom Leg

Published January 30, 2008 at 3:00 PM CST

The human brain can, indeed, make up things that aren't there — sights, sounds, feelings. Michele Norris has a literary reminder of a famous hallucination: Captain Ahab, from Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick. Ahab lost his leg but can feel it still.

Copyright 2008 NPR
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