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

Molly Caldwell Crosby holds an MFA in nonfiction and science writing from John Hopkins University and previously worked for National Geographic magazine. Her writing has appeared in Newsweek, Health, and USA Today.

A fascinating look at a bizarre, forgotten epidemic from the national bestselling author of The American Plague.

In 1918, a world war raged, and a lethal strain of influenza circled the globe. In the midst of all this death, a bizarre disease appeared in Europe. Eventually known as encephalitis lethargica, or sleeping sickness, it spread worldwide, leaving millions dead or locked in institutions. Then, in 1927, it disappeared as suddenly as it arrived.

Asleep, set in 1920s and '30s New York, follows a group of neurologists through hospitals and asylums as they try to solve this epidemic and treat its victims-who learned the worst fate was not dying of it, but surviving it.

Publishers Weekly

Here’s medical curiosity combining history, mystery, and riveting storytelling. Crosby (The American Plague) relates the vexing appearance during WWI of encephalitis lethargica—sleeping sickness—through the stories of patients, doctors, and public health servants swept up in an epidemic that affected as many as five million people worldwide in a little over a decade. Despite a high mortality rate, writes Crosby, surviving the epidemic was worse than dying from it. Survivors were left insane and locked in a statue-like immobility. As interesting to Crosby as the mystery of sleeping sickness’s sudden appearance and spread, possibly in tandem with the Spanish flu, is the aftermath, which taxed the burgeoning fields of neurology and mental health. The mystery of the epidemic isn’t yet solved, leaving concerns about a future recurrence. The remarkable human connection Crosby brings to this scientific oddity helps enlighten readers about a pandemic forgotten in the shadow of the contemporaneous Spanish flu and till now memorialized only in Oliver Sacks’s Awakening. (Mar.)

Prologue: Inside 1

Case History One: An Unknown Soldier 5

1 An Epidemic Begins 7

2 Constantin von Economo 13

3 The London Outbreak 21

Case History Two: Ruth 29

4 New York City 31

5 Ruth 44

6 The Neurologist 50

7 The Medical Investigators 54

Case History Three: Adam 63

8 Adam 65

9 Smith Ely Jelliffe 71

10 The Alienist 81

11 Only the Beginning 92

Case History Four: Jessie 99

12 Jessie 101

13 1925 109

14 A Two-Headed Beast 117

Case History Five: Rosie 121

15 Madness 123

16 Rosie 136

17 The Neurological Institute 146

Case History Six: Sylvia 155

18 The Matheson Commission 157

19 Josephine B. Neal 162

20 Vaccine Trials 169

21 Sylvia 181

22 I Have Seen the Future 193

Case History Seven: Philip 207

23 Philip 209

24 Gray Matter 212

25 Past or Prologue? 222

Epilogue: Virginia and the Forgotten Epidemic 227

Acknowledgments 231

Notes 235

Bibliography 263

Index 279