an autodidact meets a dilettante…

Asleep, by Molly C Crosby, 2010

Canto: This was one of the saddest books I’ve read in a long time. It’s about a disease that arose, and was recognised, at around the time of the ‘Spanish flu’ of 1918, though it was more sporadic and long-lasting, and rather more mysterious. It’s also a kind of cautionary tale for those among us who downplay the impact of diseases and their effects, which are so often long-term and horrifically devastating. It’s humbling to realise that we just don’t know all the answers to the pathogens that strike us down. 

Jacinta: And could revisit us, in mutated and perhaps even more deadly form, some time in the future. This book is about encephalitis lethargica, a disease that was personal to the author, as it infected her grandmother, whose entire life, though she lived to a goodly age, was clearly stunted by it. She was struck down at the age of 16, and slept for 180 days, and though she lived almost 70 years afterwards, she was robbed by this brain-blasting illness of the life of the mind, the rising above ourselves and grasping of the world that we’re attempting in this blog. Through sheer bad luck. 

Canto: And as Crosby points out, her grandmother was far from being the worst-affected victim of this disease. People died of course, but others were disastrously transformed.

 Jacinta: So let’s go to a modern website, a department of the USA’s NIH, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, for a definition:

Encephalitis lethargica is a disease characterized by high fever, headache, double vision, delayed physical and mental response, and lethargy. In acute cases, patients may enter coma. Patients may also experience abnormal eye movements, upper body weakness, muscular pains, tremors, neck rigidity, and behavioral changes including psychosis. The cause of encephalitis lethargica is unknown. Between 1917 to 1928, an epidemic of encephalitis lethargica spread throughout the world, but no recurrence of the epidemic has since been reported. Postencephalitic Parkinson’s disease may develop after a bout of encephalitis-sometimes as long as a year after the illness.

Canto: Yes, and having read Crosby’s book and knowing about the worst symptoms and a few heart-rending cases, the sentence that most strikes me here is, ‘The cause.. is unknown’. Apparently Oliver Sacks’ book Awakenings, which we haven’t read, is all about patients who have ‘awakened’, permanently damaged, from this bizarre disease, and that’s a book we now must read, though of course it will provide us with no solutions.   

Jacinta: And no arms against its future devastation, should it return – and why wouldn’t it? Crosby and others have suggested that ‘fairy stories’ like Sleeping Beauty and Rip van Winkle may have been inspired by outbreaks of the disease. Of course this is conjecture, and only if the disease returns will we be able to attack it with the technology we’ve developed in the intervening century. As the neurologist Robert Sapolsky points out in his mammoth book Behave, (so mammoth that I can’t find the quote), the number of papers published on the brain, its activity and functions, in the 21st century, has grown exponentially. We might just be ready to counteract the long term horrors of encephalitis lethargica next time round, if it comes around. 

Canto: Crosby’s book is organised into case histories, featuring people who fell into this bizarre torpid state for long periods, and when aroused, often behaved in anti-social and self-destructive ways that in no way resembled depression, between bouts of a ‘normality’ that was never quite normal. And one of the saddest features of these case histories, richly described in the notes of famous figures in early neuropsychology, such as Constantin von Economo, Smith Ely Jellife and Frederick Tilney, is that the victims disappeared into the void  once it became clear that no known treatment could save them.

Jacinta: Yes, some may have died soon afterward, others may have lived on in a limbo, locked-in state for decades. In fact the symptoms of this disease were bewilderingly varied -various tics, hiccupping, catatonia, salivation, schizoid episodes… Encephalitis literally means swelling of the brain, and it doesn’t take a medical degree to realise this could cause a variety of effects depending on which area of the most complex organism known to humanity is most affected. 

Canto: Encephalitis is usually caused by viruses, and of course viruses hadn’t been fully conceptualised when von Economo wrote his 1917 paper on what was to become known as encephalitis lethargica, as the role of DNA and RNA was unknown. However, von Economo was the first to recognise the vital role of a tiny, almond-shaped section near the base of the brain, the hypothalamus, in the distorted sleep patterns of these patients. He also wondered if there was a connection between the so-called Spanish flu and this sleeping sickness.

Jacinta: Yes, and this brings to mind the current nightmare pandemic. People, including of course epidemiologists, are wondering about the long-term effects of this virus, especially in those who seem to have recovered from a serious infection. Crosby writes of the situation a hundred years ago:

The war had provided the first opportunity encephalitis lethargica had to crawl across the world with little notice from the medical community. And by 1918, the pandemic flu had given it the second opportunity, stealing worldwide attention, infecting and killing millions. Epidemic encephalitis moved with the flu, almost like a parasite to a host, often attacking many of the same victims, receiving very little notice at all. 

Of course there has been no sign of a return of encephalitis lethargica – as yet – from a medical community that is somewhat forewarned, but it’s clear that inflammation can have very diverse effects, especially when it involves the brain. 

Canto:  But it’s like an undefeated enemy that has gone into hiding. We’ve defeated smallpox; tuberculosis and polio are in heavy retreat; leprosy seems as remote to us as the Bible, but this sleeping sickness, some of the victims of which have died within our lifetimes, has tantalised us with its bizarre and devastating effects, but has never really given us a chance to fight it.

Jacinta: Yes fighting is what it’s all about. The anti-vaxxers and the natural health crowd seem to want to leave everything to our immune system, to let diseases take their course, killing and maiming a substantial percentage of the herd to let the remainder grow stronger. If they were to read some of these case studies, to witness the lives of young Rosie, Adam and Ruth, they would surely think differently, if they had a modicum of humanity.