{"id":27732,"date":"2014-01-15T00:10:55","date_gmt":"2014-01-15T08:10:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=27732"},"modified":"2014-06-10T21:37:15","modified_gmt":"2014-06-11T04:37:15","slug":"mysterious-encephalitis-lethargica-epidemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2014\/01\/mysterious-encephalitis-lethargica-epidemic\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mysterious Encephalitis Lethargica Epidemic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"outbreak\"<\/a>What if we told you that around 90 years ago an epidemic swept across the world that killed over a million people while affecting numerous others, before disappearing, leaving the finest scientific minds of the age absolutely stumped .<\/p>\n

Then what if we told you that when it didn’t kill you, this illness could instead potentially trap you inside your body, stopping you from having the will to move or speak. You’d say we’d have to be lying because no disease that terrifying could stalk the Earth and have resulted in such an epidemic without being front-page news and remembered in the history books.<\/p>\n

Well, it did exist and cases continue to be brought forward even today; it remained one of the biggest medical mysteries for nearly a century, with scientists only very recently getting an inkling of what causes the disease, though none of the leading theories have been definitively proven yet.\u00a0 As you might expect from this, there is still no cure. Ladies and gentlemen, today we’d like to talk about von Economo disease.<\/p>\n

As you’ve probably guessed if you’re fantastically well read, von Economo disease is named after someone named von Economo-\u00a0Constantin von Economo- a psychiatrist, neurologist, and one-time owner of a magnificent moustache, who is widely credited as the first person to thoroughly document the disease in question.<\/p>\n

Economo published his findings on the disease in April of 1917, just a few short years before it became an epidemic, but several years after it had first come to the attention of academics and medical professionals.<\/p>\n

In his paper, aptly named “Die Encephalitis lethargica<\/em>“, Economo christened this new disease, Encephalitis lethargica<\/em>, which means something along the lines of “brain illness that makes you sleepy”. Today, the disease is mostly known as von Economo disease, in Economo’s honor, and Sleepy Sickness when someone doesn’t wish to pay homage to Economo’s glorious facial hair.<\/p>\n

As a neurologist, the disease was of particular interest to Economo and he discovered variations on how the disease manifests including, among other presentations,<\/p>\n