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Encephalitis lethargica: could this disease be recognised if the epidemic recurred?

¹ Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Indiana University School of Medicine, Fort Wayne, IN, USA
² Department of Neurology, University of Michigan School of Medicine, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Professor J A Vilensky, Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Indiana University School of Medicine, 2101E Coliseum2101 Blvd, Fort Wayne, IN 46805, USA;
vilenski@ipfw.edu

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

In 1973 Oliver Sacks published Awakenings, a book describing his evaluation of the effects of L-DOPA on postencephalitic parkinsonian patients at a chronic care facility in New York City. Their initial favourable response was so dramatic, and was described so well, that in 1990 the book was made into an award-winning film of the same name with Robin Williams portraying Dr Sacks and Robert De Niro one of the patients. Dr Sacks himself made a less well known documentary film, also called Awakenings, which depicted the patients themselves. In the book and both films, these engaging patients were "frozen in time." All of them had initially suffered from encephalitis lethargica, a mysterious, devastating epidemic disease of the early part of the twentieth century that probably killed about 500,000 people worldwide (figs 1 and 2).¹ Although some recent experimental and historical analyses have concluded that encephalitis lethargica was . . . [Full text of this article]