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Thinking about comas
Apr. 22nd, 2007 11:23 amOn Friday, anonymous Don and I were talking at serial diners, and the conversation turned to the "sleepy sickness" epidemic that followed on the heels of the Spanish Flu in the early 20th century (and which inspired part of the plot of the first few issues of Sandman). It had never occurred to me that this was the origin of the patienets in Awakenings. Anyway, today I looked up some more stuff relating to the topic.
It seems like one of those things that's hard to see the shape of because it takes place over time. I'm still not sure it wasn't related somehow to the Spanish flu. Although this doctor thinks it might have been a mutated form of strep throat.
Then there's this description:
The best example of what an "antigenically novel strain" can do to the world is the great 'Spanish flu' pandemic of 1918. No one knows exactly how many people died that year, worldwide, but the estimates range from 20 to 50 million, making the 1918 flu the deadliest single epidemic in world history. (More people may have died from the Black Death of the 13th century, but that was actually a series of epidemics stretching over decades. It killed a third of Europe, but spared most of the rest of the world. The 1918 'Spanish' flu hit almost every continent.)
It's funny about that 1918 pandemic. When I was a boy no one talked about it, even though there were plenty of people alive who had been through it. No books or newspaper articles were written about it, and every flu season didn't begin with panicky reminders of that devastating autumn. The 1918 flu spread around the globe in just a few months - in an era before regular airplane travel. It killed more young people than old people. On one day alone, October 10, it killed 342 people in New York and 514 in Philadelphia. It killed so many people in Boston that they ran out of coffins. It killed with alarming quickness, a trait not seen before in influenza epidemics. Religious folk thought the world was coming to an end. It was followed by an even more mysterious disease, an epidemic of sleeping sickness, encephalitis lethargica. Over a fifteen year period, 5 million people around the world came down with this malady. A third died quickly; one third never recovered, remaining virtually comatose for the rest of their lives. A bright young British pianist, Philip Leather, age 13, came down with encephalitic lethargica in 1933 and was admitted to the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel. He never left, dying there on December 15, 2002, age 82, the last known survivor of the strangest epidemic in history. He, the disease that destroyed his life, and the flu pandemic that preceded it were all but forgotten until recent years. They've been rediscovered now, in part because scare stories about emerging diseases sell books and newspapers, and there's an appetite among the reading public for history that seems relevant to our times.
Later, while mulling these things over, I had another thought - in Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), Caesar (Conrad Veidt) though described as a "somnambulist," is actually in a kind of permanent or trance state, and only moves at the instructions of the evil Doctor. Although the plot is supposed to have been based on a) a real-life murder on a fairground and b) the nasty psychiatrist encountered by one of the writers while in the military, Caesar's condition seems likely inspired by the then-contemporary encephalitic lethargica. I can't find anyone else online who has made this connection, otherwise I'd add it to Wikipedia as a detail on both entries.
It seems like one of those things that's hard to see the shape of because it takes place over time. I'm still not sure it wasn't related somehow to the Spanish flu. Although this doctor thinks it might have been a mutated form of strep throat.
Then there's this description:
The best example of what an "antigenically novel strain" can do to the world is the great 'Spanish flu' pandemic of 1918. No one knows exactly how many people died that year, worldwide, but the estimates range from 20 to 50 million, making the 1918 flu the deadliest single epidemic in world history. (More people may have died from the Black Death of the 13th century, but that was actually a series of epidemics stretching over decades. It killed a third of Europe, but spared most of the rest of the world. The 1918 'Spanish' flu hit almost every continent.)
It's funny about that 1918 pandemic. When I was a boy no one talked about it, even though there were plenty of people alive who had been through it. No books or newspaper articles were written about it, and every flu season didn't begin with panicky reminders of that devastating autumn. The 1918 flu spread around the globe in just a few months - in an era before regular airplane travel. It killed more young people than old people. On one day alone, October 10, it killed 342 people in New York and 514 in Philadelphia. It killed so many people in Boston that they ran out of coffins. It killed with alarming quickness, a trait not seen before in influenza epidemics. Religious folk thought the world was coming to an end. It was followed by an even more mysterious disease, an epidemic of sleeping sickness, encephalitis lethargica. Over a fifteen year period, 5 million people around the world came down with this malady. A third died quickly; one third never recovered, remaining virtually comatose for the rest of their lives. A bright young British pianist, Philip Leather, age 13, came down with encephalitic lethargica in 1933 and was admitted to the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel. He never left, dying there on December 15, 2002, age 82, the last known survivor of the strangest epidemic in history. He, the disease that destroyed his life, and the flu pandemic that preceded it were all but forgotten until recent years. They've been rediscovered now, in part because scare stories about emerging diseases sell books and newspapers, and there's an appetite among the reading public for history that seems relevant to our times.
Later, while mulling these things over, I had another thought - in Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), Caesar (Conrad Veidt) though described as a "somnambulist," is actually in a kind of permanent or trance state, and only moves at the instructions of the evil Doctor. Although the plot is supposed to have been based on a) a real-life murder on a fairground and b) the nasty psychiatrist encountered by one of the writers while in the military, Caesar's condition seems likely inspired by the then-contemporary encephalitic lethargica. I can't find anyone else online who has made this connection, otherwise I'd add it to Wikipedia as a detail on both entries.
