In Asleep, science writer Molly Caldwell Crosby awakens the specter of a rapacious disease that killed more than one million people all over the world in the 1920s. Encephalitis lethargica, or sleeping sickness, emerged from the ashes of World War I to march across Europe and eventually cross the Atlantic to afflict the populace of New York City. Causing swelling and inflammation in specific brain regions, the illness sickened many young people, condemning them to a sleep-like state even as they continued to hear the world around them. Many succumbed, but those who survived often displayed chronic symptoms: loss of vision, sanity, or the use of limbs. In 1927, when the scourge disappeared, the medical establishment was left reeling and befuddled, though studying the patients did help to nurture the burgeoning field of neurology. Crosby brings a personal angle to the ravages of the disease, telling the story of how ...
Capsule Reviews
Asleep, The Restless Plant, Genetics of Original Sin, Disease Maps
Written byBob Grant
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer.
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Meet the Author
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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