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

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

by Molly Caldwell Crosby (Goodreads Author)

3.62 of 5 stars 3.62 · rating details · 363 ratings · 82 reviews

Another fascinating foray into medical history from the author of The American Plague

In 1918, a world war was raging, and a lethal strain of influenza was circling the globe. In the midst of all this death, a bizarre disease appeared in Europe. Eventually known as encephalitis lethargica, or sleeping sickness, it would spread across the world, leaving millions dead or l...more

Hardcover, 304 pages

Published March 2nd 2010 by Berkley Hardcover (first published 2010)

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Feb 25, 2011 Kristi rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

If you're at all interested in diseases, epidemiology, or even just scientific narrative this book opens up an amazing world of a disease that changed the way modern science regards the human brain. But just as quickly, this disease disappeared into medical history. This book chronicles not only its world-wide spread from the battlefields of WWI to the streets of New York City, but also discusses the history of literature that might hold clues of prior occurrences of the disease. I loved this bo...more

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Feb 26, 2012 Ann rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people interested in epidemiology, history of disease

Shelves: non-fic, science-medicine

I was disappointed in this book. I started it with high hopes, because the little I know about this "forgotten epidemic" indicated that it would make for fascinating reading. Encephalitis lethargica is now mostly remembered as a footnote in the history of Parkinson's Disease (described by Oliver Sachs in his book "Awakenings", but I was curious to know more about its orgin, its relation to the great Influenza Pandemic, and its sequelae. This book left me frustrated. It felt like the author was n...more

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Aug 06, 2010 Evanston Public Library added it

When most people hear the term sleeping sickness, images of the tropics, Africa, and mosquitoes come to mind. But as Molly Crosby explains in her thoughtful and measured book, a mysterious outbreak of an infectious disease with confounding and terrifying symptoms was also dubbed sleeping sickness mainly because sufferers would fall ill and sleep or half-sleep for a little as a few days or for as much as many months. Many succumbed to the illness literally dying in their sleep. Others awoke in go...more When most people hear the term sleeping sickness, images of the tropics, Africa, and mosquitoes come to mind. But as Molly Crosby explains in her thoughtful and measured book, a mysterious outbreak of an infectious disease with confounding and terrifying symptoms was also dubbed sleeping sickness mainly because sufferers would fall ill and sleep or half-sleep for a little as a few days or for as much as many months. Many succumbed to the illness literally dying in their sleep. Others awoke in good health, but showed profound personality changes, usually negative. Some lucky patients recovered completely, but years later were struck down with a cruelly aggressive form of Parkinson's disease. What further confounded researchers was an unfortunate coincidence: just as the first reports of this sleeping sickness, or encephalitis lethargica, were made, the global influenza pandemic of 1918 reared its ugly head. Were the two related? Maybe. Some patients had had mild flu cases and just before the onset of the sleeping sickness, but research into viruses and autoimmune diseases was in its infancy,and scientiests, stretched to their limits with the flu pandemic, were no closer to nailing a cause or effective treatment for this bizarre disease. One positive outcome of the epidemic was the increase in interest in the specialty of neurology, and when the sleeping sickness outbreaks simply tapered off in the late 1920s, doctors had begun to delve into the secrets of the brain and nervous system which resulted in medical advances in the diagnosis and treatment of many conditions. Records of this strange outbreak, however, became almost forgotten in the archives of medicine. Today the concerns over the recurrence of a fast-moving, lethal flu pandemic have some researchers worried that if encephalitis lethargica is indeed related to flu, the modern world is terribly vulnerable. If you are intrigued as I am by medical mysteries, especially those still unsolved and posing a threat, you'll enjoy this fascinating if unsettling book. (Barbara L., Reader's Services)(less)

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Jun 04, 2010 Dee rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

Interesting. Crosby spends as much time creating the era of the 20's, especially in New York, as she does speaking about sleeping sickness -- encephalitis lethargica. She gives eight very graphic, very horrible examples of what happened to the people who caught it, and described the attempts of medicine to find its causes and a cure. She seems to agree with the thesis that the 1918 flu pandemic was somehow associated/causitory to the enchepalitis. No one has found the cause, even today. This typ...more

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Apr 22, 2010 Talulah Mankiller rated it 2 of 5 stars

Ahem.

So we all know that I like diseases, right? I mean, I don’t enjoy having them and if you had one I would be quite sad for you, but I like reading about them. Because I am a ghoul. I’ve tried to come up with other explanations for my fascination, but that’s it: the Mankiller is a ghoul. Plain and simple. End of story.

What with being a ghoul and all, Molly Caldwell Crosby’s Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic that Remains One of Medicine’s Greatest Mysteries definitely appealed to me. Because it’s...more Ahem.

So we all know that I like diseases, right? I mean, I don’t enjoy having them and if you had one I would be quite sad for you, but I like reading about them. Because I am a ghoul. I’ve tried to come up with other explanations for my fascination, but that’s it: the Mankiller is a ghoul. Plain and simple. End of story.

What with being a ghoul and all, Molly Caldwell Crosby’s Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic that Remains One of Medicine’s Greatest Mysteries definitely appealed to me. Because it’s a relatively new book and my library didn’t have it, I ordered a copy of it ON MY KINDLE. Man, was that ever a waste of money.

Asleep is a history of “the sleeping sickness” that swept the world in the wake of the Great Influenza of WWI. Encephalitis lethargica, as it is medically known, is an illness that begins with flu-like symptoms, then progresses into either an endless slumber (some people slept for as long as 180 days) or an insomnia so complete that it eventually kills the patient. For those who “recovered from” the illness–about a third of all victims–the prognosis was bleak: adult patients gradually lost most or all motor control, while the children who were afflicted suffered from horrible, unexplained changes in mood and behavior. Previously placid young people suddenly began physically attacking their friends, siblings, parents, teachers–and self-injurious behavior was distressingly common. One young woman Crosby mentions removed most of her own teeth and put out both her own eyes. When asked, the children said that they felt compelled to do these things, and exhibited a great deal of distress about their own actions; unfortunately for them, they were not sociopaths and did not enjoy hurting themselves or others. Something had just gone very, very wrong in their brains and they seem to have lost most impulse control.

PS: although a huge project to cure encephalitis lethargica ran all the way up through the 1930s, research into the disease was largely discontinued thereafter in favor of more wide-spread and reoccurring illnesses like polio. Encephalitis lethargica has no cure, and cases still periodically pop up. Cheerful thought, huh?

Clearly, I find the subject matter of Asleep fascinating because, well, how could you not? But unfortunately, Crosby’s writing is dullsville, managing to destroy any moments of narrative tension, and also? The number of times she referred to the victims of encephalitis lethargica as “broken, ” or “damaged” or “destroyed” was frankly appalling. Look: it’s wrong to say that about anyone simply because they happen to have some kind of illness. Period. But it’s even worse when the people you’re saying it about would have been/are fully conscious of the fact that you’re saying it. One of the great tragedies of encephalitis lethargica is that the patients, even the seemingly catatonic ones, were aware. They were aware of their surroundings the whole time. In one case that Crosby described, a doctor told the parents of a patient that he fully expected her to die; believing the girl to be comatose, he said this right in front of her.

Even though she was “asleep,” she cried.

Over and over again, Crosby described how the minds of these patients were somehow divorced from the actions of their bodies: they would scream, kick, bite, injure themselves, and not be able to understand why they did these things or–more importantly–how to stop doing them. Personally, I think it’s wrong to call most anyone “broken,” but to say that about someone who’s fully capable of understanding what you’re saying and what it means? Talk about fucking cruel. These people had (and in some cases have) a disease that caused them horrible pain and suffering; that doesn’t mean they were “broken.” They’re not toys with snapped strings; they’re human beings with an illness. Talking about them as if they are things just adds to the pain.(less)

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Mar 15, 2010 Peter Hayashi rated it 2 of 5 stars

I started with book with high hopes as the subject of the book is so fascinating and I have enjoyed a number of similar books. I was quite disappointed in this book however. My major complaint is that there was just a skimpiness of the story. There really was not much information about the epidemic and the disease in this book. Instead, we learn quite a bit (too much for my taste) about a couple of physicians, who studied the disorder and either set up or ran organizations that studied and treat...more I started with book with high hopes as the subject of the book is so fascinating and I have enjoyed a number of similar books. I was quite disappointed in this book however. My major complaint is that there was just a skimpiness of the story. There really was not much information about the epidemic and the disease in this book. Instead, we learn quite a bit (too much for my taste) about a couple of physicians, who studied the disorder and either set up or ran organizations that studied and treated the disease, but none made any substantive progress in understanding the disease. These figures are part of the story but I found none of them particularly interesting or noteworthy. The reader also learns much about the historic epoch most of it only modestly relevant. The author did quite a bit of novelizing, e.g. writing in some detail about what a particular person was feeling and wearing, the weather, the smells and sights that he or she encounters. but where is the beef?

Some of the thinness of the story no doubt reflects the state of the historic record but much more could have been done. How did they go about making the "vaccines" so often talked about late in the book? Given the frequency and salience of the obsessions and compulsions in the affected, what is the current science of other disorders that have obsessive and compulsive components? I liked the idea of the interspersed case histories but these too, I found lacking in depth. Are there really no better more detailed and more informative cases available?

Furthermore, the author also seems to lack basic understanding of some important issue. For example, on page 39 she wrote "Still it would be several more years before X-ray technology could identify emotions or brain death"..huh? X-ray technology can do neither. Also, she does not seem to understand that the term "insanity" is a legal one, not a medical diagnosis,e.g. p. 124.

It has been years since I read Oliver Sacks book about the group of encephalitis lethargica patients that he treated and my recollection of it is thus a bit hazy. But I certainly would recommend it rather than this book to anyone interested in the subject.

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Nov 11, 2012 Sarah Beth rated it 4 of 5 stars

Asleep details the mysterious and alarming sleeping sickness that swept across the globe in the early twentieth century, and which still pops up in isolated cases today. Encepahlitis Lethargica kills 1/3 of its victims who never wake up, and permanently alters/led to the institutionalization of another third. Yet it remains a mystery, and a largely unknown one at that.

Unlike many dry non-fiction (I'm looking at you, The Emperor of All Maladies), this was an easy read. Part of that was due to the...more Asleep details the mysterious and alarming sleeping sickness that swept across the globe in the early twentieth century, and which still pops up in isolated cases today. Encepahlitis Lethargica kills 1/3 of its victims who never wake up, and permanently alters/led to the institutionalization of another third. Yet it remains a mystery, and a largely unknown one at that.

Unlike many dry non-fiction (I'm looking at you, The Emperor of All Maladies), this was an easy read. Part of that was due to the structure which was centered around different patients suffering from encephalitis lethargica and their physicians. However, I found the intentionally narrative-like intro to each chapter a bit heavy handed. For example, "Jelliffe and Tilney sat in the deep red, velvet chairs of the auditorium. Outside, it was cold, and frost powdered the front steps of the building of the New York Academy of Medicine. Across the street, in the early moonlight, the tree branches of Central Park reached like talons toward the nighttime sky." While it certainly made the text less dry, the style was almost too fiction-like for me. I can't help thinking that more non-fiction seems to be leaning towards more of a narrative feel since the popularity of The Devil in the White City. This is certainly not a bad thing, in my opinion.

This disease truly disturbed me. The fact that patients who recovered reported that they were lucid during their catatonic-like state horrified me, in much the same way as the plight of stroke victim condemned to only being able to move one eye in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Additionally, I was appalled by the multiple cases of severely altered personalities in those that recovered. Especially that of Rosie, who not only ripped her own teeth out, but tore both of her eyes out with her fingers. Holy mother...That ain't right. Somebody needs to get researching this disease yesterday.

Yet perhaps most mysterious is that despite the fact that millions suffered from encepahlitis lethargica, no one today knows about or discusses the epidemic. As the author quotes Oliver Sacks, "such forgettings are as dangerous as they are mysterious." Why was this disease forgotten?

I have quite a taste for bizarre and unusual medical accounts, so this book was perfect for me. I do wish the book could have offered more of an actual medical account of the source of the disease rather than just case stories, however, I understand that that is largely dependent on the medical knowledge available to the writer. Perhaps more than any other non-fiction books I've read, this book really reminded me of another largely forgotten and greatly unknown plague detailed in The Dancing Plague: The Strange, True Story of an Extraordinary Illness. There are crazy things that can happen to your body out there. Including falling asleep for months or dancing until you collapse dead. Everyone beware.(less)

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Mar 13, 2011 Pam rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Asleep is a scary book because the disease encephalitis lethargica is still with us. What could be worse than dying? Surviving this disease without a full recovery. Or thinking that you have recovered, only to find out later that you are slowly losing control of your body forever. This is a medical book that delves into the forgotten "sleeping sickness" disease that killed and effected millions of people in the 1920's and 1930's. I saw this book in the library the other day and remembered the bo...more

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Jul 27, 2010 Cathy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: finished

I really wanted to like this book. It's my type of subject, it's an interesting disease.... but I just felt so disappointed. There was a lot of writing that I could've done without, mostly detailed descriptions of the weather, the sounds, the smells, the sights, the history of NYC, etc. I just wanted the book to cut to the story. I also didn't realize that it was going to almost be more a book about neurology than the disease itself, focusing more on the doctors than the patients.

I'm still real...more

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Feb 02, 2011 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars

I happen to catch an interview on BookTV wherein this author and Rebecca Skloot were the guest “interviewees”. Came away from that experience with a desire to read the books written by these two young women. In the case of Ms. Skloot, her book is a best seller [“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”]. This one is not as popular a read I guess. Mores the pity. Ms. Crosby has managed to write a piece of non-fiction that reads very much like a novel.

The “Forgotten Epidemic” which is the subject ma...more I happen to catch an interview on BookTV wherein this author and Rebecca Skloot were the guest “interviewees”. Came away from that experience with a desire to read the books written by these two young women. In the case of Ms. Skloot, her book is a best seller [“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”]. This one is not as popular a read I guess. Mores the pity. Ms. Crosby has managed to write a piece of non-fiction that reads very much like a novel.

The “Forgotten Epidemic” which is the subject matter of this book is encephalitis lethargica aka “Sleeping Sickness”. Asleep is set in 1920's and ‘30's New York. This was a world wide epidemic that coincided with the Spanish flu pandemic. Of concern to all of us in the 21st century is the fact that doctors do not know whether encephalitis lethargica is caused by a virus, bacteria, or the body’s own immune response. “They do know that it may reemerge in the wake of a new flu pandemic”.

“The kaleidoscope of symptoms ranged widely from unending sleep to dangerous insomnia, facial tics to catatonia, Parkinson’s to violent insanity”. It struck all levels of New York society from the richest of the rich to the poorest of the poor. “Patients who fell victim to it, learned the worst fate was not dying of sleeping sickness, but surviving it”.

The one positive effect that emerged from this epidemic was the growth of the field of neurology. In this book you follow a group of neurologists through hospitals and insane asylums as they try to solve the mystery that surrounds this disease. Ms. Crosby provides you with an understanding of the life and times that these pioneers of medicine contend with in order to advance their understanding of this mysterious ailment. There are case studies where in you glean a clear and frightening knowledge of the devastating effects of this insidious affliction.

The good news is — “Antivirals, antibiotics, and steroids could all help a patient recover before encephalitis {a swelling of the brain} has a chance to cause damage. Scientists are committed to that work today”.

A highly readable read. Appealed to me on several levels, not the least of which is my unending interest in history. (less)

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Feb 28, 2012 Stella rated it 4 of 5 stars

Well written book about a forgotton epidemic that started about 1918 and mysteriously disappeared some ten years later. Encephalitis Lethargica or the sleeping sickness often followed a case of the flu. It caused its victims to sleep for weeks or months and left Parkinson's symptoms in the adult patients. Sometimes the patients became comatoes and never woke up or they died! In children, strange behavior symptoms followed a bout of the sleeping sickness. They threw tantrums, refused to eat, coul...more

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Jul 02, 2011 Julie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

So if I could stand the sight, smell, feel and idea of blood, I think I would have been a great doctor. Years of schooling doesn't frighten me, and hospitals don't give me the heeby-jeebies. School wasn't even too much of a downer for me. I love to research and try to figure out puzzles and look for patterns, and even talking with crazy people is interesting to me. Of course, I am a bit of a hypochondriac, and so when I read this book, Asleep, I wondered if I have not suffered from it, too. Fort...more

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Aug 31, 2012 Bruce rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: military-history, politics, us-history, world-history

Sometimes there is a spurt of research on a disease and then the novelty wears off. It seems to be the case with encephalitis lithargica aka epidemic encephalitis aka sleeping sickness. Throughout the ages outbreaks of this disease seem to have occurred as evidenced more recently in tales by Edgar Allen Poe among others. The effects of the disease are often devastating to those who survive. Their catatonic state has been likened to zombies and may well have instilled that idea in various legends...more

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Jan 12, 2013 Alyssa A rated it 3 of 5 stars

Not bad...I do wish there had been more information about the disease and the research and progress made on finding out what causes it/how to treat it...but maybe the lack of information on those aspects is because of the limited amount that people WERE able to find out about it before it died out. As other reviewers have noted, there was more information about the sociological history of new York city than I was interested in. I am mainly using this book as a jumping off point...I'm excited tha...more

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Mar 23, 2013 Holly rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is an interesting book about the disease encephalitis lethargica which occurred in epidemic proportions globally in the early part of the twentieth century. The book gives good background for the introduction of this disease and the mystery it presented to the medical and public health communities. It does a great job of stressing that the cause of the disease is still unknown and that the secondary symptoms, that often occur years later, can be devastating. However, the book spends a lot o...more

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Aug 14, 2010 Pat rated it 4 of 5 stars

The flu pandemic of 1918 garnered much attention at the time; and since. The much lesser known epidemic of sleeping sickness that occurred concurrently was, and still is, a mystery in many ways. Crosby's very personal reason for exploring the subject of the under-reported and still greatly misunderstood epidemic encephalitis sprang from her memories of her grandmother; a survivor of the disease. Set against an imformative history of NYC; early medical practices and research, the most compelling...more

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Mar 25, 2010 Alisa rated it 4 of 5 stars

Fascinating and well-written book; my only quibble is that there was too much about the doctor's personal lives and not enough about the patients and the disease itself. The most interesting thing? As I'm reading the symptoms/after-effects of this disease, I'm getting more and more freaked out by how similar it sounds to....zombies. Yes, really! Other than the whole "eating your brains" thing, this book could be about zombies. And on page 186, there was actually this:

"...zombie films may well ha...more

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Feb 28, 2012 Paperclippe rated it 3 of 5 stars

The story and the information contained within was indispensable, clever, and enlightening. For anyone with a love of medical mysteries, this book is a must-read, but be prepared for a few off-putting anecdotes (for example, the claim that studies show that crimes do increase during a full moon, given without supporting evidence, when in actual fact all the studies and specials I have seen discount this face), a love of anachronistic language, and a bit of shoddy editing. Get past that, though,...more

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Jan 02, 2012 Lorette rated it 3 of 5 stars

If you are a fan of Oliver Sachs, as I am, this is your type of book. This book alternates between case histories and factual narrative detailing "sleeping sickness," or encephalitic lethargica. There was an epidemic following the flu epidemic of 1918, hitting New York City particularly hard. 1/3 of patients died outright, 1/3 recovered, and 1/3 recovered, only to battle Parkinsonian trembling, personality changes, troubling neurological and psychological symptoms later in life. There was anothe...more

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Mar 29, 2012 Shana rated it 4 of 5 stars

The author's writing is wonderful and she is a great storyteller and tthis story is eminently worthy of being told.
I devoured the book in spite of the fact after a couple of cases ( the book is organized by 7 case studies and biographies of the physicians associated with them) I realized that the build up and promise of more information within each section was rarely panning out to new knowledge. Now in all fairness a main reason for this is clearly that 100 year old patient case histories appe...more

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Nov 14, 2011 Di rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: medical-anthropology, nonfiction, history, health, science

I was interested in finding out more about sleeping sickness as, although my (now deceased) grandmother had once experienced the disorder, I understood very little about it. Well, it turns out that to this day, even the medical community remains in the dark when it comes to the nature of encephalitis lethargica. Indeed, no one knows the true cause or how to treat this diabolical illness. This is without doubt a frightening notion. Yet, the world at large has chosen to forget the devastation it l...more

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Oct 28, 2010 Dennis D. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Asleep is the engaging non-fiction account of the outbreak of an unusual type of encephalitis known as encephalitis lethargica, a variety of "sleeping sickness." It's often characterized as a 'forgotten' illness, because as devastating as it was from about 1918 to 1927, cases now are infrequent and isolated, and there have been no further epidemics. The disease got some recent attention as the result of the memoir Awakenings, by Oliver Sacks, which was made into a movie starring Robin Williams a...more Asleep is the engaging non-fiction account of the outbreak of an unusual type of encephalitis known as encephalitis lethargica, a variety of "sleeping sickness." It's often characterized as a 'forgotten' illness, because as devastating as it was from about 1918 to 1927, cases now are infrequent and isolated, and there have been no further epidemics. The disease got some recent attention as the result of the memoir Awakenings, by Oliver Sacks, which was made into a movie starring Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro. But aside from that, encephalitis lethargica by and large doesn’t get a lot of press.

There are theories, but it is not known for certain what causes it, nor is it known why it all but disappeared. Among the earliest known victims were soldiers returning from WW1, and some of their symptoms, especially headaches and lethargy, were often attributed to shell shock. It was only gradually that doctors realized they had something quite different on their hands, and it took children being stricken to conclusively affirm that this was not the result of battle. Other symptoms run the gamut from unending sleep to chronic insomnia, body or facial tics to catatonia, and violent insanity, even to the point of self-mutilation.

Author Molly Caldwell Crosby is making a name for herself with studies of sickness. She received much acclaim for her first book, The American Plague, in which she tackles yellow fever, focusing especially on the 1878 outbreak which killed more than half the population of her hometown, Memphis, TN. With Asleep, she uses seven specific cases as a framework to illustrate how encephalitis lethargica struck; how its inconsistent presentation of symptoms made it difficult to diagnose, and how an entirely new branch of medicine – neurology – arose at least in part to study and treat it.

This framework is effective, as it provides a natural backdrop for both the progression of the disease, and the various efforts of the doctors and public health officials who devoted themselves to fighting it. Because the victims of this disease came from all walks of life, it can’t be helped that some of the accounts end ambiguously. If a sufferer didn’t happen to be famous, or the spouse or child of a tycoon or captain of industry, the surviving records may end when a patient was institutionalized or simply fell off the grid, what little grid there was to fall off of in that era. Despite this, the cases and bulk of the treatment (or lack thereof) are all thoroughly described, and all disturbing in their own ways.

Crosby makes a good argument for the luckiest victims being the ones that simply died at onset. She has assembled a crackling, lively analysis that reads like a thriller, but would be a great place for researchers to start should encephalitis lethargica one day reemerge as mysteriously as it disappeared.
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May 03, 2011 Melinda rated it 3 of 5 stars

I picked this book up at Costco because it sounded interesting, Awakenings is one of my favorite movies and I needed something to read while I stood in line. This is a very well-researched book about a disease, Encephalitis Lethargica (Sleepying Sickness), and how it has baffled the medical field for decades. The book kept me interested throughout. I only wish more time had been spent in detailing the individual cases. An interesting note is that the author's grandmother was a survivor of the di...more

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Nov 12, 2010 Leslie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Crosby's exploration of the Encephalitis lethargica epidemic of the early 20th century is fascinating. Crosby's prose is easily accessible, and her examination of this neurological disease uses medical case studies, history, and biography to draw a portrait of how the epidemic came about and what its effects were on its victims and society. Fans of Sacks' Awakenings will especially appreciate this book as Crosby refers to Sacks' work with a group of survivors of the epidemic frequently, and inde...more

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May 12, 2013 Lucy rated it 4 of 5 stars

A solid, if slim overview of the forgotten sleeping sickness epidemic of the teens and '20s. The writing is engaging, if on the flowery side on occasion. The conclusion is unsatisfying, if only because this affliction remains mysterious,so there's not a lot to say. One half star removed for the writing style, the other because I was half-seriously planning to write a similar book eventually!

Read this and Oliver Sacks' "Awakenings."

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Jan 23, 2012 Kdooley rated it 3 of 5 stars

A really interesting book about "Sleeping Sickness." Not good if you're a hypochondriac, since the crux of the issue is that we still don't know what causes it or why or in what circumstances. I liked the way this book was written a lot, though I could have done with a little less detail regarding the physicians and a little more detail regarding the patients. I know that was probably hard to come by, though.

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Jul 03, 2011 Jessica rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really should have gone into epidemiology. I find disease and the way it spreads fascinating. This book was really interesting, but quite gruesome in places (as in the account of one girl who started gouging out her own eyes and pulling out her teeth, etc.) I'm definitely glad sleeping sickness seems to have disappeared for the moment. It doesn't sound like a pleasant disease.

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Apr 22, 2011 AJ rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: health-medicine, non-fiction, own

I enjoyed this book, but I didn't see it as a biography of an epidemic so much as a biography of early 20th century New York with some case studies of encephalitis lethargica thrown in. In fact, I thought the history and random facts about New York were more interesting than the point of the book!

It's definitely not the best epidemic book I've read (far from it), but since it is one of the only accessible books about encephalitis lethargica I enjoyed learning more. Of course, the source materia...more

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Oct 30, 2012 Ayse rated it 3 of 5 stars

I have always been fascinated by the 1918 flu pandemic, and I was really interested to read this book. But it is in a weird way more a walking tour of New York City between 1920 and 1930 than a history of the disease. The organization is really strange, with stories jumping around in time and sudden shifts in perspective, and lordy, the number of descriptions of people walking to work!

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Nov 04, 2010 Lauren rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history, science, true-story

It was hard to get into at first because of the way the author jumped around so much. I put it down as what little I had read, scared me. I - being determined to always finish what books I pick to read - picked it back up today. Not only did it delve into the story behind this unusual and forgotten illness, but it also gave histories and politics of the time (although I still feel the author jumped around too much and some of the histories weren't necessary). You learned of how Neurology took a...more

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About Molly Caldwell Crosby

Molly Crosby is a best-selling author and journalist. Her first book The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic That Shaped Our History was published in November 2006 by Berkley Books, an imprint of Penguin, USA. The New York Times hailed it as a “first-rate medical detective drama,” and Newsweek called it “gripping.” The book has been nominated for the Barnes & Noble...more

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Books by Molly Caldwell Crosby

The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic that Shaped Our History

The Great Pearl Heist: London's Greatest Thief and Scotland Yard's Hunt for the World's Most Valuable Necklace

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title link	preview: Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic that Remains One of Medicine's Greatest Mysteries
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7438853-asleep?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1311658833l/7438853.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7438853-asleep?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic that Remains One of Medicine's Greatest Mysteries by Molly Caldwell Crosby[/url]

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

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