Encephalitis Lethargica: Neurological Sleeping Syndrome
Encephalitis Lethargica is a neurological syndrome also known as ‘sleeping sickness’ or ‘sleepy sicknesses. The disease attack the brain, giving Parkinsonian like symptoms.
It spread across Europe and then the worldwide beginning in the winter of 1916–17, and continuing into the 1930s. A Neurologist Constantin von Economo and the pathologist Jean-Rene Cruchet described the term encephalitis lethargica in 1917. The exact number of people effected is unknown but it is estimated that more than one million people were causing directly more than 500,000 deaths. Most of the people who survived were never able to return to their normal pre-morbid vigour.
In the words of the famed neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks:
They would be conscious and aware – yet not fully awake; the patients ...