Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic that Remains One of Medicine's Greatest Mysteries
On the heels of World War I, another atrocity emerged to take millions more lives: flu. Overshadowed by that worldwide viral menace was an equally—indeed, Crosby believes, an even more—frightening killer, encephalitis lethargica (EL). If the name rings no bell, perhaps that isn’t 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 doesn’t mean it is linked to flu by either causation or correlation. Yet the concurrence cannot be discounted. What’s 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--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.