Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic That Remains One of Medicine's Greatest Mysteries

Description

Another fascinating foray into medical history from the author of The American Plague In 1918, a world war was raging, and a lethal strain of influenza was circling the globe. In the midst of all this death, a bizarre disease appeared in Europe. Eventually known as encephalitis lethargica, or sleeping sickness, it would spread across the world, leaving millions dead or locked in institutions.Then, in 1927, it would disappear as suddenly as it had arrived-or so the doctors at first thought.Asleep, set in 1920s and '30s New York, follows a group of neurologists through hospitals and insane asylums as they try to solve this worldwide epidemic.The symptoms could include not only unending sleep but dangerous insomnia, facial tics, catatonia, Parkinson's, and even violent insanity. Molly Caldwell Crosby, acclaimed author of The American Plague, explores the frightening history of this forgotten disease- and details the frantic effort to conquer it before it strikes again.From BooklistOn the heels of World War I, another atrocity emerged to take millions more lives: flu. Overshadowed by that worldwide viral menace was an equallyindeed, Crosby believes, an even morefrightening killer, encephalitis lethargica (EL). If the name rings no bell, perhaps that isnt surprising, since the malady claimed only a million lives, though it left at least that many more permanently disabled, before dropping off epidemiologists maps around 1927. The illness popular moniker, sleeping sickness, is more familiar, to the point of seeming innocuous. But the disease was and is anything but. No one has ever been able to articulate its etiology. Just because it flared up during a flu pandemic doesnt mean it is linked to flu by either causation or correlation. Yet the concurrence cannot be discounted. Whats more, the disease is unpredictable, having re-emerged a couple times since the 1920s. Crosby and others fear EL may return simultaneously with another worldwide outbreak of flu. Medical science is, they insist, no better prepared for it than it was 90 years ago. --Donna Chavez Review