The Mysterious Illness That Caused You To Sleep For YEARS
About this episode
This episode explores the mysterious sleeping sickness known as encephalitis lethargica that affected people in the early 1900s.
Imagine getting sick and then slipping into a sleep you can’t wake up from, not for days, not for months, sometimes not for years. In the early 1900s, a mysterious “sleeping sickness” known as encephalitis lethargica swept across the world, leaving people frozen between life and death: eyes closed, bodies still, but often aware of everything happening around them. Doctors watched as some patients never woke up, while others opened their eyes decades later with strange, permanent damage to their brains, turning one baffling illness into one of medicine’s most haunting unsolved stories.
People in this episode
Host: Georgia Marie
Topics covered
- sleep disorders
- medical mysteries
- historical illnesses
- true crime
- unsolved medical cases
Keywords
- sleeping sickness
- encephalitis lethargica
- medical history
- mystery illness
- true crime
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