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We’ve covered strange diseases before, such as Stoneman Syndrome and our episode on strange
neurological diseases.
The world is full of unusual maladies, that for sufferers can be devastating but for the
rest of us can be fascinating.
Have you ever heard of “Foreign accent syndrome”?
One day you suddenly sound like a French, Chinese, Russian person, but have never been
to those countries (you should watch the YouTube videos).
What about “Alice in Wonderland syndrome”, that can make people see objects much smaller
than they actually are.
Perhaps not a good ailment for insecure men....
But we shouldn’t joke.
Such diseases can be terrifying and debilitating, while some unusual diseases render people
in states that make life absolutely impossible.
We’ll talk about one such disease today, in this episode of the Infographics Show,
Encephalitis lethargica - the sleeping sickness.
Let’s start with the definition of this disease, which is often abbreviated to EL.
The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke tells us there is no clear cause
for EL.
As experts say, it remains a bit of mystery.
It might start as headache, blurred vision, fever, slow movements, slow thinking, and
in some cases a complete breakdown occurs that makes people into something of a statue.
NIH also writes, “Patients may also experience abnormal eye movements, upper body weakness,
muscular pains, tremors, neck rigidity, and behavioral changes including psychosis.”
We know it’s a form of encephalitis, which is an inflammation of the brain that could
have been brought on by several viruses or autoimmune diseases.
A bite from a tick could cause this terrible disease, known as tick-borne encephalitis.
A mosquito might also transmit this disease.
Some kids after getting vaccines have also contracted the disease, but we are told cases
are very rare.
Britain’s NHS further explains, “Encephalitis due to a reaction to a previous infection
is known as ‘post-infectious encephalitis’.
If it's caused by a tumor or the cause is unknown, it's called ‘autoimmune encephalitis.’”
Millions of people are affected by encephalitis each year, and in 2015, 150,000 people died.
There are also mild types of this disease that have few symptoms.
Back to sleeping sickness, a kind of encephalitis that has no known cause and plenty of terrible
symptoms.
It was a disease that shocked the world during an outbreak between 1915 and 1926.
It’s said 5 million people around the world were infected during this epidemic, and more
than a third of those people died.
Many of those that survived did not make a full recovery, meaning they were somewhat
slowed down to say the least.
The famous British neurologist, Oliver Sacks, whom we have talked about before, said some
patients would just sit there, motionless, staring, but not interested in anything.
They were like living statues.
“They neither conveyed nor felt the feeling of life; they were as insubstantial as ghosts,
and as passive as zombies,” wrote Sacks.
The website The Conversation writes about what it calls the curious case of encephalitis
lethargica, saying that some of those affected seemed “frozen in time.”
It writes about the stages of the disease.
First people would feel uneasy, have a mild fever, and perhaps develop double vision.
Something was wrong, but they were not sure what.
In the further stages things got worse.
Patients might lose all interest in life; they would become a different person altogether.
Some of them became paralyzed and statue-like, and many people died at this point because
of respiratory failure.
But for those that survived, days or even years later, they might develop post-encephalitic
parkinsonism.
We’ll get around to that, but first we should say that some people did get better.
The Encephalitic Society writes, “Outcome is variable.
Some people may make a full recovery, some patients die, and for others a Parkinsonian-type
state may persist.”
In all around 40 percent of sufferers died.
20 percent survived but were severely handicapped.
26 percent recovered but were left with long term issues and 14 percent made full recoveries.
So, how were the people who lasted years before post-encephalitic parkinsonism hit them?
Most of those that lived for years before the final stage set in were mostly children.
Some of those would grow up unusual to say the least, often exhibiting impulsive behavior,
or not taking interest in others.
As they got older some would become almost psychopathic.
“Errant behaviors included cruelty to anyone who crossed them; destructiveness; lying;
and self-mutilation including, in one example, removal of eyes,” writes The Conversation
about some of the worse cases, adding, “When they reached adolescence, these patients manifested
inappropriate and excessive sexuality, including sexual assault without regard for age or gender.”
Some of these kids would improve after time, but for others the only thing that would slow
down their crazy behavior was the onset of post-encephalitic parkinsonism.
This would often happen when the adolescents became adults.
Most of these people became confined to hospitals.
Some patients described their state while in institutions as being not able to execute
their will to do anything.
Others were reduced to the state of looking much like the aforementioned statue; they
were catatonic, but their minds were still working.
You may have seen this dramatized in the movie “Awakenings”, in which survivors of EL
are awoken from this catatonic state with the use of the drug L-Dopa, which was administered
by the famous Oliver Sacks.
He wrote a book about it, and that’s what the movie starring Robert De Niro was based
on.
Could an outbreak ever happen again?
It seems there have been isolated cases.
Virologist Professor John Oxford told the BBC in 2004 that he thought it could keep
happening.
“Until we know what caused it we won't be able to prevent it happening again,” he
said.
The BBC writes about a girl in 1993 that was taken to hospital hallucinating, shaking,
and making strange clawing movements with her hands.
Her brain was inflamed, and it turned out that the 23-year old was suffering from, you
guessed it, Encephalitis Lethargica.
The girl did eventually get better, but it took two years.
That wasn’t the end, though, and the BBC writes that there were 20 more cases of this
mysterious disease in the years to come, with some patients not fully recovering.
On studying the cases doctors found that one thing linked most of them: they had started
feeling ill with a sore throat.
These patients had been hit by a rare bacteria called “streptococcus bacteria.”
Doctors believed this had mutated and become EL.
Had that been the case in the past?
British doctors then went to look at medical records of those that were struck with EL
in the past, and they found sore throats were always in the list of symptoms.
They found that records noted that the “Diplococcus” bacteria was found, which is a form of streptococcus
bacteria.
Does that mean they solved the curious case and where it begins?
Well, medical professionals still write that there has never been any definitive proof
of what causes EL.
Many experts do agree however that streptococcus bacteria is a more compelling case than influenza,
which many experts had first thought caused EL.
Next time you get a sore throat try not to lose your mind, though, as there’s way more
chance of you winning the lottery that coming down with EL.
We should not finish this show without mentioning Austrian psychiatrist, neurologist and Tom
Selleck-lookalike, Constantin von Economo, who first documented this strange disease.
He wrote the paper, “Die Encephalitis lethargica” and that’s where the name came from.
He once wrote of the disease, “To look at these patients, one would suppose them to
be in a state of profound secondary dementia.
Emotions are scarcely noticeable in the face, but they are mentally intact.”
This is a pretty sad way to end this video, so let’s talk about something more fun for
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Can you imagine being trapped in that state?
What do you think about this disease?
Let us know in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other video called What Is Stone Man Syndrome?!
Thanks for watching, and, as always, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe.
See you next time!