With recent outbreaks of hantavirus and Ebola virus, and the continuing trauma of COVID, the last thing we need is a another disease to worry about. You need not worry about encephalitis lethargica, because it appears to have come and gone already. In fact, the last known person to have survived the disease died in 2002. However, between 1917 and 1930, it was terrifying.
People started suffering from a mysterious constellation of symptoms, ranging from tremors to fatigue to drooling. Many slept for days at a time or became paralyzed with locked-in syndrome, in which there's complete awareness, but the body cannot respond. Doctors figured out encephalitis lethargica was based in the brain, hence the name. But they never figured out what caused it. The disease infected around a million people across Europe and Northern America. Half of those who suffered from it died, and many of the survivors had lingering effects, or declined mentally or physically from a resurgence many years later. Read about the mysterious epidemic of encephalitis lethargica at Mental Floss. -via Strange Company
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