Capsule Reviews

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 ...