Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic That Remains One of Medicine's Greatest Mysteries / Molly Caldwell Crosby 291 p.

Details the epidemic of sleeping sickness (encephalitis lethargica) that spread mysteriously around the globe after WWI, seemingly in the wake of the Spanish influenza pandemic. Crosby uses 7 case studies to frame the different phases of the epidemic, from the beginning of the outbreak, through the long (and unsuccessful) efforts to find either treatment or cure, to the final period in which post-encephalitic patients spent years 'asleep' in institutions, forgotten by almost everyone until a young Dr. Oliver Sacks treated some of them with L-dopa. Very disturbing because, as Crosby explains, no one has ever discovered the exact mechanism by which the disease worked, or why some fell ill and not others. In other words, it could happen again... Less interesting was Crosby's writing style. I think she's a frustrated novelist, and embroiders the text with too much detail. The facts are compelling enough.