Word: lethargica
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...wreathed in mystery. For centuries nothing was known of its causes, though it was noted that in many cases it followed an attack of encephalitis, inflammation of the brain. Then, from 1916 to 1926, there came a worldwide epidemic of brain inflammation, caused by a virus and named encephalitis lethargica because the most severely stricken victims spent days or weeks almost comatose and immobile. Some of these patients soon developed full-blown cases of Parkinsonism, marked by alternations of involuntary movements and rigidity, a fixed gaze and a shuffling gait. Even after this encephalitis virus disappeared in 1931, the incidence...
...physicians evolved a hypothesis: except for a few rare cases caused by chemical poisoning, the great epidemic of Parkinsonism resulted from something that happened long ago and then ceased. What was that something? Poskanzer has an idea: a mild, probably unrecognized infection with the virus of encephalitis lethargica back in the 1920s could have damaged certain brain cells; later, as the brain's chemistry was impaired with advancing age, the signs of Parkinson's began to appear...
...born within ten years of 1897, and their age at the time their disease developed has been going up steadily-from an average of 34 in 1920 to at least 61 now. The Poskanzer-Schwab explanation: most recent Parkinsonism victims were infected during a 1915-26 epidemic of encephalitis lethargica, the virus of which disappeared in 1931. The virus may have damaged or lain dormant in the part of the brain that controls the movements affected by Parkinsonism. A telling point in favor of their hypothesis: Poskanzer and Schwab can trace only one Parkinsonism victim born since...
Basis of the Poskanzer-Schwab prediction was an intensive study that convinced the two researchers that a majority of Parkinsonism victims developed the disease as a result of the worldwide epidemic of encephalitis lethargica that lasted from 1915 to 1926. By 1931, the virus that caused the epidemic had inexplicably died out, apparently completely. Many of the epidemic's victims who were mildly infected suffered delayed nerve damage, the two doctors believe. In some cases the damage has taken three or four decades to manifest itself as Parkinson's disease. If sufferers from the disease were indeed restricted...
Delayed Fuse. This brings the Harvard researchers to the enigmatic epidemic. First noted in war-ravaged Rumania in 1915, it was an inflammation of the brain that left some victims comatose for weeks or months-hence its medical name of encephalitis lethargica, or "sleeping sickness." Unrelated to any form of sleeping sickness previously known, it was apparently caused by a virus. The epidemic reached the U.S. in 1918, died out by 1926. No proved case has been found since. The virus vanished...