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

Rating: Author: Molly Caldwell Crosby ISBN : Product Detai New from Format: PDF

Download for free medical books PRETITLE Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic that Remains One of Medicine's Greatest Mysteries [Kindle Edition] POSTTITLE from mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link A fascinating look at a bizarre, forgotten epidemic from the national bestselling author of The American Plague.

In 1918, a world war raged, and a lethal strain of influenza circled the globe. In the midst of all this death, a bizarre disease appeared in Europe. Eventually known as encephalitis lethargica, or sleeping sickness, it spread worldwide, leaving millions dead or locked in institutions. Then, in 1927, it disappeared as suddenly as it arrived.

Asleep, set in 1920s and '30s New York, follows a group of neurologists through hospitals and asylums as they try to solve this epidemic and treat its victims-who learned the worst fate was not dying of it, but surviving it.


Direct download links available for PRETITLE Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic that Remains One of Medicine's Greatest Mysteries [Kindle Edition] POSTTITLE

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• File Size: 510 KB
• Print Length: 304 pages
• Publisher: Berkley; Reprint edition (March 2, 2010)
• Sold by: Penguin Group (USA) LLC
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0030CVRWA
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
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• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #254,446 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #70 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Internal Medicine > Infectious Disease > Communicable Diseases
• #70 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Internal Medicine > Infectious Disease > Communicable Diseases

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

Molly Caldwell Crosby's "Asleep," traces a strange malady whose origins are shrouded in mystery. Encephalitis lethargica ("a swelling of the brain that makes one sleepy") "came in two waves--the first began in 1916 and peaked in 1920." A second wave struck in 1924. Today, few people remember this scourge that killed closed to a million people all over the world. One of the victims was Crosby's grandmother, Virginia Thompson Brownlee, who became ill in 1929 at the age of sixteen but was fortunate enough to survive with limited long-term effects. Tragically, many of the afflicted were children and young adults whose brains were not yet fully developed; they were not all equipped, physically or emotionally, to battle this destructive illness.

Although the symptoms of encephalitis lethargica varied from one individual to the next, some of the manifestations were: disconnectedness from one's body, lethargy, delirium, slurred speech, stiffness, seizures, tics, Parkinsonism, and extreme personality changes. Some people became catatonic or went into a deep sleep for long periods of time. Around one third recovered, one third died, and one third survived. However, some became so disabled that they were permanently institutionalized. One common thread is that many of the sufferers had recovered from the flu before they came down with encephalitis lethargica. Even those who appeared to have recovered fully were vulnerable to recurrences years later. It was almost as if a demon lay dormant in their bodies, only to reemerge when they least expected it.

Crosby divides her book into seven chapters, each of which recounts a compelling case history, including that of Jessie Morgan, the wife of financier J. P. Morgan.

Ever since I read Oliver Sacks' fascinating book "Awakenings" about the decades-long deep-freeze that some victims of the 1920's epidemic of encephalitis had been put into - I'd been hoping to find some follow-up book about sleeping sickness itself. Here is that book.

Author Molly Crosby traces some of the history of the disease of encephalitis lethargica (alternately known as "sleeping sickness). She paints a picture of the early part of this century and how World War I, with the crowded, transient conditions it promoted, allowed this strange disease to get a foothold in many urban areas around the world. We're transported back to the New York of the 1920's, its chestnut vendors, trolleys, tenements. We're advanced through some of the Depression years. Crosby includes some astute economic analysis here, finding remarkable parallels between the kinds of indebtedness that triggered the 1929 Depression and our current recession. So this book offers the bonus of providing some very interesting general history about an eventful couple of decades.

The epidemic occurred in the wake of the much more widely documented influenza epidemic of 1918. The Doctors and other medical researchers who devoted themselves to the disease back then were baffled at every turn by the strange twists and turns that this lesser-known companion disease of influenza was capable of taking. Ultimately, the medical community was so frustrated by the disease's inscrutable, protean nature, that when it receded as far as being epidemic - it was shelved and almost forgotten. Crosby returns us to the heyday of encephalitis research.