“Encephalitis lethargica remains one of the most haunting medical mysteries of the twentieth century, a disease that swept across the world and then vanished as suddenly as it appeared.”
“Encephalitis lethargica remains one of the most haunting medical mysteries of the twentieth century, a disease that swept across the world and then vanished as suddenly as it appeared.”
“At its height between 1916 and 1920, it left thousands of people suspended in a strange limbo between wakefulness and paralysis. Some slept endlessly. Others stayed wide awake but could not speak, move, or express emotion. Many were fully conscious inside bodies that refused to respond, locked in a living silence they could not break.
The illness often began innocently enough with a fever, a sore throat, a few days of fatigue, before the neurological collapse began.
Doctors watched patients slip into rigid catatonia, develop violent tremors, or drift into dreamlike hallucinations. Survivors of the acute phase were not always fortunate.
Many spent decades in institutions, motionless but aware, their condition unchanged year after year. When neurologist Oliver Sacks administered L-DOPA to these patients in the late 1960s, many briefly awoke after decades of stillness, revealing minds that had been alive inside frozen bodies.
A century later, scientists still do not know the true cause. No virus or bacterium has ever been definitively linked to the epidemic, and no cure has ever been found. It remains one of medicine’s most unsettling reminders of how fragile the brain truly is.
Added Fact: Some of the surviving patients who “awakened” under L-DOPA reported vivid memories from the decades they spent immobile, including conversations, sounds, and even changes in seasons, suggesting they were fully aware the entire time despite being unable to move or speak.”
From historyfeels on IG.
Multimoon on
There it is, the signal that I’ve consumed enough Reddit content for the day.
MAXIMUMTURBO8 on
Moral of the story: don’t talk shit about a person in a coma when you’re in the same room. They have nothing to do, and will remember it forever – or, they die and haunt the shit outta you. No way to win, just keep it classy and positive.
LottaCheek on
Excellent movie about this called Awakenings with Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro. Highly recommend.
doomlite on
This was actually interesting as fuck, kudos.
VegaDelalyre on
A beautiful film narrates the L-DOPA “miracle”: *Awakenings*.
fineman1097 on
Awakenings is a fictionalized account of dr sachs work on this. It is gripping and sad and worth a watch.
thisisfive on
“The exact number of people infected is unknown, but it is estimated that more than one million people contracted the disease during the epidemic, which directly caused more than 500,000 deaths. Most of those who survived never recovered their pre-morbid vigour.” [wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encephalitis_lethargica)
mamut2000 on
I believe there was a movie about that mass awakening caused by that doctor.
I had not heard of this before so went on a deep dive. Seems like perhaps they figured out the cause of it in 2012:
“After the publication of this compendium, an enterovirus was discovered in encephalitis lethargica cases from the epidemic.[21] In 2012, Oliver Sacks, the author of the book Awakenings, about institutionalized survivors, acknowledged this virus as the probable cause of the disease.[22][verification needed] Other sources have suggested Streptococcus pneumoniae as a cause.[23]”
AGrandNewAdventure on
There a great movie about this called Awakenings. Check it out, it’s heart breaking, but good.
MmmmmisterCrow on
Actually it’s not a mystery. We know it happened when a sloppy wizard tried to trap death but trapped the king of dreams instead.
aaron2933 on
This is what the movie ‘Awakenings’ was based off
xXSN0WBL1ND22Xx on
“Darkness imprisoning me
All that I see
Absolute horror
I cannot live
I cannot die
Trapped in myself
Body my holding cell”
Ok_Finance_8292 on
Oh hey the “statue disease” that essentially paralzyzed you that swept the globe in the mid 1910s to the 1920s. Sure hope this doesn’t come back up anytime soon. It won’t, right? RIGHT?
Crimson_Raven on
Fantastic, some nightmare fuel to research right before bed
MAGArPedos on
Dream of the Endless was incarcerated during this time.
MagmaTroop on
What’s more amazing to me though is that the disease is still around, people are getting it, and they can’t work out what causes it. In this day and age I find it incredible that they don’t know.
OtterZoomer on
> Many were fully conscious inside bodies that refused to respond, locked in a living silence they could not break
Wow, this is very similar to what I experienced when I was 27 and contracted viral meningitis. They isolated me to a negative-pressure hospital room for two months, until I began to recover (which was frankly pretty lucky – the doctors told my wife they didn’t think I’d ever be normal again).
During most of that time I wasn’t able to interact with the world because I lost the ability to speak beyond a 4-year-old level, and I couldn’t write. They’d have me try to do simple tasks like to draw a circle and the best I could do was something that looked like an amoeba. The most frustrating thing is that I was 100% normal internally, but I just couldn’t speak with my normal vocabulary (I could only use words that I knew when I was around 4 years old). I could *think* all of the words I knew as an adult, I just couldn’t speak them out loud, and oddly I couldn’t write either, or control a pencil/pen with any accuracy. I remember trying to explain to the doctors how I could think everything normally internally but just couldn’t express it, but my four-year-old self lacked the vocabulary to do that and so I’m not sure if I even got that message across. It was very frustrating.
After I began to recover it took a while for me to regain/relearn how to talk, walk, etc. And the pain kind of went on for about a year after that such that I wasn’t able to lie down to sleep (too painful) and had to lean up against the wall at night. Not my fav experience. But also not my worst experience. That came later… lol. This life can be a bit challenging.
King-Snorky on
That image on the right looks like bat boy and is straight up nightmare fuel
posco12 on
So interesting 1973 documentary of the New York Psychiatric Hospital with Dr. Sacks. Interviews patients, disease, treatment used. Never seen Oliver Sacks not gray.
We all know now that it was because they trapped Dream.
Cats4E on
It’s cuz Morpheus went on holiday
enjoyourapocalypse on
Lines up with the “Spanish Flu” plague
maffemaagen on
Because Morpheus was trapped by Roderick Burgess
theMalnar on
I heard it was because an old magic guy was trying trap Death, but accidentally caught her younger brother Dream. Kept him locked in a bottle in the basement for 70 years.
Striking_Parsnip_457 on
The true cause was that the lord of dreams was imprisoned by Roderick Burgess.
SilverBudget1172 on
i think was roderic burgess fault when imprisoned an eternal in his basement
33 Comments
“At its height between 1916 and 1920, it left thousands of people suspended in a strange limbo between wakefulness and paralysis. Some slept endlessly. Others stayed wide awake but could not speak, move, or express emotion. Many were fully conscious inside bodies that refused to respond, locked in a living silence they could not break.
The illness often began innocently enough with a fever, a sore throat, a few days of fatigue, before the neurological collapse began.
Doctors watched patients slip into rigid catatonia, develop violent tremors, or drift into dreamlike hallucinations. Survivors of the acute phase were not always fortunate.
Many spent decades in institutions, motionless but aware, their condition unchanged year after year. When neurologist Oliver Sacks administered L-DOPA to these patients in the late 1960s, many briefly awoke after decades of stillness, revealing minds that had been alive inside frozen bodies.
A century later, scientists still do not know the true cause. No virus or bacterium has ever been definitively linked to the epidemic, and no cure has ever been found. It remains one of medicine’s most unsettling reminders of how fragile the brain truly is.
Added Fact: Some of the surviving patients who “awakened” under L-DOPA reported vivid memories from the decades they spent immobile, including conversations, sounds, and even changes in seasons, suggesting they were fully aware the entire time despite being unable to move or speak.”
From historyfeels on IG.
There it is, the signal that I’ve consumed enough Reddit content for the day.
Moral of the story: don’t talk shit about a person in a coma when you’re in the same room. They have nothing to do, and will remember it forever – or, they die and haunt the shit outta you. No way to win, just keep it classy and positive.
Excellent movie about this called Awakenings with Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro. Highly recommend.
This was actually interesting as fuck, kudos.
A beautiful film narrates the L-DOPA “miracle”: *Awakenings*.
Awakenings is a fictionalized account of dr sachs work on this. It is gripping and sad and worth a watch.
“The exact number of people infected is unknown, but it is estimated that more than one million people contracted the disease during the epidemic, which directly caused more than 500,000 deaths. Most of those who survived never recovered their pre-morbid vigour.” [wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encephalitis_lethargica)
I believe there was a movie about that mass awakening caused by that doctor.
https://preview.redd.it/ctga9cmxxv1g1.png?width=573&format=png&auto=webp&s=d951ba4270f087457e86cbaff21de56a2679fc09
It didn’t completely disappear, it’s just a pretty rare disease today.
Rare super interesting as fuck
RIP Dr Oliver Sacks.
Go look for interviews and content about him. He was a truly fascinating individual.
https://preview.redd.it/vdveku4zyv1g1.jpeg?width=806&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1012dc4453023fd970bc3d8d3849c644582e154d
Wow.
I had not heard of this before so went on a deep dive. Seems like perhaps they figured out the cause of it in 2012:
“After the publication of this compendium, an enterovirus was discovered in encephalitis lethargica cases from the epidemic.[21] In 2012, Oliver Sacks, the author of the book Awakenings, about institutionalized survivors, acknowledged this virus as the probable cause of the disease.[22][verification needed] Other sources have suggested Streptococcus pneumoniae as a cause.[23]”
There a great movie about this called Awakenings. Check it out, it’s heart breaking, but good.
Actually it’s not a mystery. We know it happened when a sloppy wizard tried to trap death but trapped the king of dreams instead.
This is what the movie ‘Awakenings’ was based off
“Darkness imprisoning me
All that I see
Absolute horror
I cannot live
I cannot die
Trapped in myself
Body my holding cell”
Oh hey the “statue disease” that essentially paralzyzed you that swept the globe in the mid 1910s to the 1920s. Sure hope this doesn’t come back up anytime soon. It won’t, right? RIGHT?
Fantastic, some nightmare fuel to research right before bed
Dream of the Endless was incarcerated during this time.
What’s more amazing to me though is that the disease is still around, people are getting it, and they can’t work out what causes it. In this day and age I find it incredible that they don’t know.
> Many were fully conscious inside bodies that refused to respond, locked in a living silence they could not break
Wow, this is very similar to what I experienced when I was 27 and contracted viral meningitis. They isolated me to a negative-pressure hospital room for two months, until I began to recover (which was frankly pretty lucky – the doctors told my wife they didn’t think I’d ever be normal again).
During most of that time I wasn’t able to interact with the world because I lost the ability to speak beyond a 4-year-old level, and I couldn’t write. They’d have me try to do simple tasks like to draw a circle and the best I could do was something that looked like an amoeba. The most frustrating thing is that I was 100% normal internally, but I just couldn’t speak with my normal vocabulary (I could only use words that I knew when I was around 4 years old). I could *think* all of the words I knew as an adult, I just couldn’t speak them out loud, and oddly I couldn’t write either, or control a pencil/pen with any accuracy. I remember trying to explain to the doctors how I could think everything normally internally but just couldn’t express it, but my four-year-old self lacked the vocabulary to do that and so I’m not sure if I even got that message across. It was very frustrating.
After I began to recover it took a while for me to regain/relearn how to talk, walk, etc. And the pain kind of went on for about a year after that such that I wasn’t able to lie down to sleep (too painful) and had to lean up against the wall at night. Not my fav experience. But also not my worst experience. That came later… lol. This life can be a bit challenging.
That image on the right looks like bat boy and is straight up nightmare fuel
So interesting 1973 documentary of the New York Psychiatric Hospital with Dr. Sacks. Interviews patients, disease, treatment used. Never seen Oliver Sacks not gray.
https://youtu.be/sGq04Opx9DY?si=hSd-p0hX-fQXotr1
We all know now that it was because they trapped Dream.
It’s cuz Morpheus went on holiday
Lines up with the “Spanish Flu” plague
Because Morpheus was trapped by Roderick Burgess
I heard it was because an old magic guy was trying trap Death, but accidentally caught her younger brother Dream. Kept him locked in a bottle in the basement for 70 years.
The true cause was that the lord of dreams was imprisoned by Roderick Burgess.
i think was roderic burgess fault when imprisoned an eternal in his basement