Asleep
Mar 31, 2010
Asleep
Author: Molly Caldwell Crosby
Pub. Date: March 02, 2010
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
Format: Hardcover, 304pp
ISBN-13: 9780425225707
ISBN: 0425225704
Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic that Remains one of Medicine's Greatest Mysteries.
Yet another book on another epidemic that wipes out a million people. Sounds like yet another blah tome that bores you to death with medical chatter right? That's what I was thinking.
I was most pleased to find out that I was completely wrong. This books brings the doctors and patients to life in true recreations of the events in a way that keeps the reader interested and desperate to know what happens to them in the end.
The stories revolve around a disease that is now known as Encephalitis Lethargica, but in the 20s was known as the Sleeping Sickness. People around the world suddenly started coming down with this inexplicable illness. Healthy people, sick people, elderly and young, there seemed to be no known factor that would explain why people were becoming ill. One million people went to sleep and never woke up. Of the ones that did wake up, many ended up in sanitariums as their brain functions never returned to normal.
Suddenly the illness went away and no more cases were discovered. But the fear is that since no cause was ever found in the first place, how do we stop it from coming back again. No cure was ever found for these people.
This is a very interesting book with many tidbits of information on the events of the times as well as this illness. It's a great little history lesson encompassing more than just this disease that remains a mystery to this day.
