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The Mystery of the Sleepy Sickness · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
0:13
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is a good
0:17
Speaker 2: old fashioned stuff you should know. Medical mystery episode.
0:21
Speaker 3: That's right.
0:22
Speaker 1: Look at Jerry were there. She's just sitting there. She's frozen.
0:25
Speaker 1: And what you can do is, I don't know if
0:28
Speaker 1: you know this, Josh, if you walk over to Jerry
0:30
Speaker 1: and take her hand off the keyboard and raise it
0:32
Speaker 1: above her head, she'll just keep it there until you
0:34
Speaker 1: move it back down.
0:36
Speaker 2: Why, Chuck, sounds a lot to me like Jerry might
0:40
Speaker 2: have chronic encephalitic lethargica.
0:44
Speaker 3: I think you might be right.
0:46
Speaker 2: I might be right. I might be partially right. I
0:48
Speaker 2: think I would have been more right if I had
0:49
Speaker 2: called it encephalitis lethargica. But that's probably what she has.
0:55
Speaker 2: If those are her symptoms.
0:57
Speaker 3: That's right.
0:58
Speaker 1: File this under medical mysteries and also filing under a
1:01
Speaker 1: Julia jam But we're basically going to call it el
1:06
Speaker 1: or encephalitis lethargica here and there. I was also known
1:09
Speaker 1: as the sleepy sickness, sometimes the sleeping sickness, although there's
1:14
Speaker 1: a new sleeping sickness that is not to be confused
1:17
Speaker 1: with the previous one.
1:19
Speaker 2: No, it's spread by the tetsifly and it's epidemic. I
1:22
Speaker 2: don't think it's endemic yet in Africa, and it has
1:26
Speaker 2: got a couple of similar symptoms, but they're in no
1:29
Speaker 2: way related from what I understand.
1:31
Speaker 3: That's right.
1:31
Speaker 1: We're talking about an outbreak that happened in the early
1:34
Speaker 1: twentieth century in Europe, starting in about nineteen sixteen, wherein
1:40
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, people would kind of out of nowhere,
1:43
Speaker 1: they would lose mobility, some people would fall into a
1:46
Speaker 1: coma like state or a sleep like state. Many many
1:50
Speaker 1: people would die within days, and it reached epidemic proportions
1:54
Speaker 1: in at least four continents by nineteen nineteen, killed hundreds
1:58
Speaker 1: of thousands of people.
1:59
Speaker 3: And it's a medical mystery because we still don't.
2:02
Speaker 1: Know exactly why it happened or why it just kind
2:06
Speaker 1: of suddenly went away.
2:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, where it came from, what caused it? Nothing, We
2:10
Speaker 2: don't know almost anything about it. They just kind of
2:13
Speaker 2: know the symptoms enough that when you see the very
2:18
Speaker 2: very very rare case come along these days, you can say,
2:21
Speaker 2: I think this actually is encephalitis lethargica. And there was
2:25
Speaker 2: something you said about people being struck into like a
2:28
Speaker 2: coma or sleeplike state. The people who are struck with
2:32
Speaker 2: in cephalites lethargica, they weren't like laying there like sleeping
2:34
Speaker 2: beauty on their backs with like their hands crossed over
2:37
Speaker 2: their chest like it was like you're saying, like they
2:40
Speaker 2: might have their hand in the air and their mouth
2:42
Speaker 2: open and like a silent scream and their eyes were open.
2:44
Speaker 2: They just weren't moving at all and they were just
2:48
Speaker 2: sitting like that. That's the kind of like horrible symptom
2:51
Speaker 2: that you could suffer from for decades. Like once that started,
2:56
Speaker 2: it might just keep going on for the rest of
2:58
Speaker 2: your life, even though this happened to you and childhood.
3:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly so. And there's a bit of a reveal
3:03
Speaker 1: that we're going to hang on to here. But we're
3:06
Speaker 1: gonna start off with not a reveal because that's not
3:08
Speaker 1: how you do things in the.
3:10
Speaker 2: Three act structure, not in the podcast.
3:13
Speaker 3: Biz no, no, No.
3:14
Speaker 1: We're gonna start out nineteen sixteen with a doctor constantin Vaughan.
3:20
Speaker 1: Is it economo or Economo? I? Like the first one
3:25
Speaker 1: that's like saying is it economy or economy?
3:30
Speaker 2: This sounds to me like a Cosmo Kramer alias why.
3:35
Speaker 1: Don't you just tell me the name of the movie
3:37
Speaker 1: you want to see.
3:40
Speaker 3: I'll never not laugh at that bit.
3:41
Speaker 2: No, it's a good one.
3:43
Speaker 3: Oh boy.
3:44
Speaker 1: So he was a doctor at the University of Vienna's
3:47
Speaker 1: psychiatric neurological clinic and he started seeing some strange cases
3:53
Speaker 1: come through his office in nineteen sixteen where the symptoms
3:56
Speaker 1: were you know, they had diagnoses on the charts, like
4:00
Speaker 1: meningitis or MS or delirium, but the symptoms weren't matching
4:04
Speaker 1: these things or anything else that he could think of. Yeah,
4:06
Speaker 1: and the first thing he did was ruled out neurological toxins,
4:11
Speaker 1: infections and neurological disorders, and then was like, all right,
4:15
Speaker 1: I'm open here. Let let's like, no one knows what
4:18
Speaker 1: this is and we need to figure it out, so
4:20
Speaker 1: let's sort of put our minds to this thing.
4:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, he dove in. He started describing it. He wasn't
4:25
Speaker 2: actually the first one to describe it. I think he
4:28
Speaker 2: was actually beaten by a couple of days, even though
4:31
Speaker 2: some people say it was the opposite way around, by
4:33
Speaker 2: a French physician named doctor Renee Cruschet. The difference was
4:37
Speaker 2: doctor Crusette's take was that this was maybe a behavioral disorder,
4:42
Speaker 2: and doctor Economo von Economo said, no, this is like
4:47
Speaker 2: clearly some sort of infection or something like that. It's
4:49
Speaker 2: an epidemic. It's transmissible. So that's why this is sometimes
4:53
Speaker 2: called Economo encephalitis. It was essentially named after him because
4:58
Speaker 2: he was the guy who said, this is what's going
5:00
Speaker 2: going on. This is what I think is going on.
5:02
Speaker 2: Check out these nutso symptoms.
5:04
Speaker 1: Right, not so nuts to at first, because when people
5:07
Speaker 1: would come in at first, they had basically looked like
5:10
Speaker 1: the flu, you know, fever, coughing, you know, kind of
5:15
Speaker 1: what you would think of. Everyone said the flu, right, yeah,
5:17
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't. Yeah, there you go.
5:20
Speaker 2: That's I watched Zuelander recently.
5:22
Speaker 1: You know, a picture is worth a thousand words. A
5:24
Speaker 1: Josh impression of the flu was worth at least twenty
5:27
Speaker 1: of my words.
5:28
Speaker 2: All right, thanks?
5:30
Speaker 3: Was that part of Zulander, did you?
5:32
Speaker 2: Yeah? He had the black clung when he went back
5:36
Speaker 2: home to mine coal with his dad.
5:38
Speaker 3: Oh, I love that dumb movie.
5:40
Speaker 2: It is a really great dumb movie. I was like,
5:43
Speaker 2: this is pretty great still.
5:45
Speaker 1: All right, So flu like symptoms at first, then just
5:49
Speaker 1: a huge array of neurological symptoms that were really inconsistent
5:52
Speaker 1: among the patients, the severity of which was pretty inconsistent.
5:57
Speaker 1: Sometimes it varied widely from one to another. But one
6:00
Speaker 1: of the most common threads of these neurological symptoms was
6:03
Speaker 1: something called hyper somnolence, which is just really really sleepy,
6:09
Speaker 1: like feeling really sleepy, and then eventually it could lead
6:11
Speaker 1: to that coma like state where you're just sort of
6:14
Speaker 1: locked in.
6:15
Speaker 2: So here's the thing. I so the sleep, the type
6:19
Speaker 2: of sleep though that is common among people struck within
6:24
Speaker 2: cephalitis lethargica, is not what you would consider sleep. They're
6:28
Speaker 2: not getting rest. You can wake them very easily. They
6:32
Speaker 2: are probably semi aware of what was going on around
6:35
Speaker 2: them the whole time they were sleeping, but they couldn't
6:39
Speaker 2: not fall asleep. Another thing that sometimes gets chalked up
6:43
Speaker 2: under this hypersominolence is freezing mid action, like maybe they're
6:48
Speaker 2: taking a bite of broccoli. That's a bad example because
6:52
Speaker 2: they probably are like, I can't make myself eat this brocoli.
6:54
Speaker 2: It's so disgusting. But let's say they're eating like a
6:57
Speaker 2: delicious animal cracker, and they stopped mid bite. They might
7:00
Speaker 2: not move again, or they might like hear a song
7:05
Speaker 2: or something like that, and all of a sudden they
7:06
Speaker 2: start eating the animal cracker again.
7:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not.
7:11
Speaker 2: The point is it's called the sleeping sickness. It's not
7:14
Speaker 2: sleep as you would understand it.
7:16
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, that's good to clear that up.
7:18
Speaker 1: Thanks, because sleeping sickness sounds pretty good to me right
7:21
Speaker 1: about now.
7:23
Speaker 2: It kind of does.
7:25
Speaker 1: Half of these cases, it was a pretty wide age range.
7:27
Speaker 1: About half of them were in people aged ten to thirty.
7:31
Speaker 1: Like I said, a lot of the patients died. Sometimes
7:34
Speaker 1: they died within like a week or two after onset
7:36
Speaker 1: of symptoms. There was one case of a girl who
7:39
Speaker 1: was walking home from a concert suddenly experienced a paralysis,
7:44
Speaker 1: fell asleep within about a half hour, and died less
7:47
Speaker 1: than two weeks later.
7:49
Speaker 2: There was also some weird stuff, as we'll see, that
7:52
Speaker 2: had to do a psychiatric system symptoms, where sometimes people
7:56
Speaker 2: would be fine after you know, suffering from this for
7:59
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks, but they will their personality would
8:02
Speaker 2: have changed. There was one report of I guess a
8:06
Speaker 2: study found four reports of people who developed kleptomania after
8:11
Speaker 2: having suffered this and then ostensibly were cured from it.
8:15
Speaker 2: So like, it could really mess with your head, essentially
8:18
Speaker 2: in just about any way your head can be messed with.
8:21
Speaker 1: Uh did win Ona Writer claim that was her? Remember
8:25
Speaker 1: when she was stealing stuff?
8:26
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, I remember.
8:27
Speaker 3: It was so weird.
8:29
Speaker 2: It was a big deal.
8:30
Speaker 3: She came back pretty strong, which I'm glad. I like
8:33
Speaker 3: Winona Writer. She does a great job in Stranger Things.
8:36
Speaker 2: Oh, she's awesome and everything she's ever been in. Heather's Dude,
8:39
Speaker 2: just one of the all time great movies. She was
8:41
Speaker 2: great Mermaids, and then yeah, all the way through to Beetlejuice.
8:45
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna say Beetlejuice Beetle Juice, but definitely Beetlejuice.
8:48
Speaker 2: And then Stranger thinks.
8:49
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, and a great crush of much of gen
8:54
Speaker 3: X for sure. Both dudes and chicks.
8:58
Speaker 2: You got that straight. We're talking and dudes and chicks.
9:02
Speaker 2: Jen X says that.
9:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, they do, all right.
9:05
Speaker 1: So Van Economo was studying all these people. He was
9:09
Speaker 1: studying corpses of these people. He finally breaks it down
9:13
Speaker 1: into its subgroups, the first of which is acute e
9:18
Speaker 1: l That is the initial signals that you're going to get.
9:21
Speaker 1: We talked about the fluey kind of stuff that you
9:23
Speaker 1: get and all these neurological symptoms that are going to follow.
9:27
Speaker 1: Then he broke those down into three forms, from most
9:30
Speaker 1: common to least common, starting with the most common somnolent ophthalmologic.
9:39
Speaker 1: How would you say that, ophthalmologic ophthalmoplegic, That's what I'm going.
9:44
Speaker 3: With, all right, that's the most deadly form.
9:47
Speaker 1: More than half the patients die when they have this form.
9:50
Speaker 1: This is a really overwhelming sleepiness, but like you said,
9:54
Speaker 1: you're aware, you're easy to wake up. The optimal part
9:58
Speaker 1: is ocular paralysis, so you have you're not moving your eyes,
10:01
Speaker 1: so if people come and they wave their hand in
10:03
Speaker 1: front of your face, your eyes aren't moving or anything
10:05
Speaker 1: like that. And also those neuro psychiatric symptoms that you
10:09
Speaker 1: were talking about, like delirium sometimes confusion, catatonius, stupor stuff
10:14
Speaker 1: like that.
10:15
Speaker 2: There was also the worst report that I saw, and like,
10:18
Speaker 2: I didn't see anything like this, but I checked and
10:20
Speaker 2: it does seem to have been a case report of
10:22
Speaker 2: a girl from the thirties who basically had a psychotic
10:27
Speaker 2: break because of it, and she pulled out all of
10:29
Speaker 2: her own teeth and ouch out both of her eyes.
10:31
Speaker 2: A little girl did because of this. And again it's
10:35
Speaker 2: just some weird outlier symptom. But as you see, when
10:38
Speaker 2: we get further and further into this, it's just the
10:41
Speaker 2: brain getting eaten up somehow someway in some fairly predictable regions.
10:47
Speaker 2: So it's creating this whole cascade or galaxy of different
10:51
Speaker 2: symptoms that are just the worst things that can happen
10:54
Speaker 2: to your brain happening.
10:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, the next subgroup of the next least or I
11:00
Speaker 1: guess the next most common depending on which way you're
11:03
Speaker 1: looking at it, is hyperkinetic. That is mania basically is
11:07
Speaker 1: the big part of this one. You have a manic
11:08
Speaker 1: phase in voluntary vocalizations and kind of herky jerky movements,
11:14
Speaker 1: and then a hypomanic phase where there's a lot of fatigue,
11:16
Speaker 1: a lot of weakness, you can hallucinate, you can have
11:20
Speaker 1: nerve pain in your limbs and in your face. And
11:23
Speaker 1: this is one of the odder symptoms is your sleep
11:27
Speaker 1: pattern will flip from day to night or I guess
11:31
Speaker 1: night to day.
11:31
Speaker 3: If you were a factory worker or something.
11:34
Speaker 2: And there's another thing with that sleeping sickness part, you know,
11:37
Speaker 2: like your sleep is messed up. I also saw a
11:40
Speaker 2: chuck that in at least one of these people might
11:44
Speaker 2: also be super sleepy but not be able to fall
11:47
Speaker 2: asleep no matter how hard they try, which sounds worse
11:50
Speaker 2: to me than most of the other stuff.
11:52
Speaker 3: For sure.
11:53
Speaker 2: There's a third one that he said is the least common,
11:56
Speaker 2: but it's also a way that it can present. It's
11:59
Speaker 2: called hemiostatic akinetic, which is you can't move akinesis. And
12:05
Speaker 2: this is kind of what the classic idea of what
12:08
Speaker 2: encephalitis lethargica looks like, where you're just you're just sitting
12:13
Speaker 2: there with like, yeah, your right arms in the air,
12:16
Speaker 2: your left arms a little further down, your mouth's open.
12:21
Speaker 2: You're basically a statue essentially, is how it's described. You're
12:26
Speaker 2: frozen in place and you're not going to move until
12:30
Speaker 2: somebody maybe put some slight pressure on your arm and
12:33
Speaker 2: then maybe you'll move it down. But it's not that
12:36
Speaker 2: they're just going to put pressure on your arm for
12:37
Speaker 2: a second and then you move your arm down, like
12:39
Speaker 2: they have to move your arm down. And this is
12:42
Speaker 2: what's called waxy flexibility. You can pose somebody in this
12:46
Speaker 2: state any way that you want them to, So you
12:51
Speaker 2: have to be very kind when you're dealing with patients
12:54
Speaker 2: like this.
12:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, I could not help but think that waxyf of
12:58
Speaker 1: flexibility sounds like an album title for sure, like Guided
13:02
Speaker 1: by Voices or somebody.
13:05
Speaker 2: Lips inc.
13:07
Speaker 3: Is that a real band?
13:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're a function town people.
13:11
Speaker 3: Oh oh okay, yeah, oh waxy flexibility. Sure nailed it. God,
13:16
Speaker 3: why voice is? What was I thinking?
13:18
Speaker 2: This is the the biggest part to me, I guess
13:22
Speaker 2: part of all of this because of the sleeping part.
13:25
Speaker 2: The people suffering this, including the people who are or
13:28
Speaker 2: wax figures frozen in place for years or decades potentially,
13:34
Speaker 2: are there mentally. They're not like locked in as in
13:39
Speaker 2: locked in syndrome, where they know every single thing that's
13:41
Speaker 2: going on around them at all times, right, But they're
13:45
Speaker 2: essentially in the same boat where they're aware of stuff.
13:49
Speaker 2: They're aware of time passing. There were people coming and
13:52
Speaker 2: going and interacting with them. They cannot respond, they can't speak,
13:58
Speaker 2: they can't change their position of their eye, they can't
14:00
Speaker 2: focus their attention, they can't do anything that would suggest
14:04
Speaker 2: to anyone that they are there in any way to
14:08
Speaker 2: er form. And it wasn't until a genuine medical miracle
14:12
Speaker 2: took place that we understood, Oh my god, these people
14:15
Speaker 2: have been there in their heads the whole time. They're
14:18
Speaker 2: not just like comatose, like just completely out of consciousness.
14:22
Speaker 2: They're conscious.
14:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And you know, earlier I said
14:28
Speaker 1: like they're locked in. I didn't mean the literal locked
14:31
Speaker 1: in syndrome. I just meant sort of, you know, look
14:33
Speaker 1: like they're locked in.
14:34
Speaker 2: Yeah. I didn't take it like that, Yeah, but I
14:36
Speaker 2: think people might have. So, yeah, well, come on, guys.
14:41
Speaker 1: We don't know how many cases there were. It was
14:43
Speaker 1: a legitimate pandemic, though it's one of the things that
14:47
Speaker 1: was hard to diagnose.
14:48
Speaker 3: They think it was under diagnosed and.
14:50
Speaker 1: Reported estimates run from five hundred thousand to more than
14:53
Speaker 1: a million, but they think that maybe half of the
14:56
Speaker 1: cases weren't even reported to who knows how many it
14:58
Speaker 1: could have been. About a third of them died, a
15:01
Speaker 1: third survived and we're kind of okay, And then a
15:05
Speaker 1: third survived and then got it again later on, and
15:10
Speaker 1: that is acute eel. So maybe we should take a
15:13
Speaker 1: break and talk about chronic el after.
15:14
Speaker 2: This let's all right, We'll be right back, okay, Chuck.
15:44
Speaker 2: So a lot of the stuff I was talking about
15:45
Speaker 2: about people being frozen in place as if they were statues,
15:49
Speaker 2: they had waxy flexibility, mutism, catatonia, They weren't able to
15:54
Speaker 2: respond or move or anything. When I said for like
15:58
Speaker 2: years or decades, more accurately, I would have been referring
16:02
Speaker 2: to the chronic form of encephalitis lethargica, because it was
16:07
Speaker 2: essentially it seems to me kind of like ammeostatic akinetic,
16:10
Speaker 2: but for years and years. The scariest part about all
16:14
Speaker 2: this was that you had gone through the standard case
16:19
Speaker 2: of encephalitis lethargica, one of those three that we just
16:23
Speaker 2: talked about, and got better. You may have died, You
16:28
Speaker 2: may have gotten better, but maybe you had like behavior changes,
16:33
Speaker 2: like you turned into a kleptomaniac or something like that.
16:36
Speaker 2: Or you got better and thought everything was fine, but
16:39
Speaker 2: then you suddenly suffered from being just a ton of
16:44
Speaker 2: bricks being dropped on you, and all of a sudden
16:46
Speaker 2: you can't move for the rest of your life, even
16:48
Speaker 2: though it's been ten years since you had that case
16:50
Speaker 2: of encephalitis lethargica.
16:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. The chronic is much the same as
16:56
Speaker 1: the earlier but with a few added symptoms, one of
16:59
Speaker 1: which is very, very strange. You can have mood swings,
17:03
Speaker 1: pretty normal feelings of euphoria, and maybe even an increased libido,
17:08
Speaker 1: which is not the weirdest thing psychosis in about thirty
17:12
Speaker 1: percent of patients, again not the most abnormal thing in
17:15
Speaker 1: the world, but excessive silliness in the use of puns
17:19
Speaker 1: was an actual symptom that they saw over and over
17:22
Speaker 1: again in acute cases. Yeah, isn't that bizarre or not
17:26
Speaker 1: acute in chronic cases, right?
17:28
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, But again, the defining trait, the one that
17:31
Speaker 2: people would point to and be like, oh, that person
17:33
Speaker 2: has chronic encephalitis lethargica is that statue thing that I
17:37
Speaker 2: was talking about, And that's more clinically called rather than
17:41
Speaker 2: that statue thing, doctors tend to call it post encephalotic parkinsonism,
17:46
Speaker 2: and parkinsonism is one of those difficult things to grasp
17:50
Speaker 2: until you just stop trying to think too hard about it.
17:54
Speaker 2: It's essentially a bunch of movement in neurological symptoms and dysfunctions,
17:59
Speaker 2: and Parkinson's includes parkinsonism, but not all parkinsonism is Parkinson's disease.
18:07
Speaker 2: That's right, Okay, it took me way longer than I
18:11
Speaker 2: care to admit to finally just nail that down and
18:13
Speaker 2: stop running in circles trying to figure it out.
18:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think they even had. One of
18:19
Speaker 1: the reasons they call it post encephalitic PARKINSONI is parkinsonism parkinsonism, Gez,
18:26
Speaker 1: that's a tough one, I know, or PEP is to
18:28
Speaker 1: distinguish it from Parkinson's isn't exactly the same thing.
18:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, And one of the big things that distinguish it,
18:33
Speaker 2: because a lot of that shares a lot of symptoms.
18:36
Speaker 2: But one of the things that distinguishes post encephalatic parkinsonism
18:40
Speaker 2: and Parkinson's disease is that Parkinson's disease progresses gradually in
18:45
Speaker 2: a predictable pattern. Post Encephalatic parkinsonism, like I said, it
18:49
Speaker 2: can come out of the blue. You could be again
18:51
Speaker 2: sitting there eating an animal cracker, and all of a sudden,
18:54
Speaker 2: you never finished eating that animal cracker for the rest
18:56
Speaker 2: of your life. It just can suddenly come out of
18:59
Speaker 2: no where and you're just living your normal life, and
19:03
Speaker 2: then all of a sudden, you're in an institution and
19:05
Speaker 2: you're bound never to move again unless you happen to
19:08
Speaker 2: be in the right place at the right time in
19:10
Speaker 2: the late nineteen sixties.
19:12
Speaker 1: That's right, And this is the big reveal. If you
19:15
Speaker 1: were hearing these symptoms and you think, hey, that sounds
19:17
Speaker 1: awfully familiar. I think I saw a movie about that,
19:19
Speaker 1: then you're correct. This is the movie from the book Awakenings,
19:23
Speaker 1: based on neurologist Oliver Sacks' book of the same name
19:29
Speaker 1: about his work with EEL patients in the nineteen sixties.
19:31
Speaker 1: I think there were eighty chronic el patients he worked
19:34
Speaker 1: with at Beth Abraham Hospital in the Bronx, New York
19:37
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty six.
19:40
Speaker 3: When this came around and Oliver Sacks was in there,
19:44
Speaker 3: e L had gone away.
19:45
Speaker 1: Basically, it was a medical footnote, and not a lot
19:48
Speaker 1: of people in the nineteen sixties even knew much about
19:51
Speaker 1: it because it was one of those things that they
19:53
Speaker 1: never figured out what it was, or how it started,
19:55
Speaker 1: or how to cure it or anything.
19:56
Speaker 3: It kind of just went away.
19:57
Speaker 1: So all the doctors were like, all right, God, I
20:00
Speaker 1: guess we don't worry about that anymore, right exactly, And
20:02
Speaker 1: they just moved.
20:03
Speaker 3: On to their other work.
20:05
Speaker 1: There was a nineteen eighty five NPR interview where he
20:08
Speaker 1: was talking about this is a quote motionless figures who
20:12
Speaker 1: were transfixed in strange postures, sometimes rather dramatic postures, sometimes not,
20:17
Speaker 1: with an absolute absence of motion, without any hint of motion,
20:21
Speaker 1: So everything looked frozen. And that was you know, Robert
20:24
Speaker 1: de Niro's character in the movie Awakenings.
20:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, and all the others that he eventually grabbed together. Yeah,
20:30
Speaker 2: in assemble. When's the last time he saw Awakenings.
20:34
Speaker 3: It's been a while. I think I remember thinking it
20:36
Speaker 3: was a pretty good movie back then. Though.
20:37
Speaker 2: It's a great movie. Yeah, I watched it last night.
20:41
Speaker 3: Who directed that? Do you know?
20:42
Speaker 2: Laverne? Oh?
20:44
Speaker 3: Was that Penny Marshall?
20:45
Speaker 2: Yeah? She did. It was great. I mean, like, I
20:48
Speaker 2: don't remember if Tonio got an oscar or not, but
20:50
Speaker 2: if you didn't, that's one of the all time great snubs. Yeah,
20:54
Speaker 2: she did amazing. I forgot how wonderful Robin Williams is
20:58
Speaker 2: to just man, what a great guy that dude was.
21:01
Speaker 2: Great dude, great movie too.
21:03
Speaker 1: Watching a thing with him this morning and very very
21:05
Speaker 1: sad stuff.
21:06
Speaker 2: Where were you watching?
21:08
Speaker 1: It? Was an Instagram post of him with his mother
21:11
Speaker 1: and his mother making him laugh, and I think the
21:14
Speaker 1: whole point of the post was like, you rarely got
21:16
Speaker 1: to hear Robin Williams like genuine laugh. And I heard
21:20
Speaker 1: it and I was like, yeah, I don't know if
21:21
Speaker 1: I really ever heard that. And his mom made him
21:23
Speaker 1: laugh that hard.
21:23
Speaker 3: It was really sweet.
21:24
Speaker 2: Can you do an impression?
21:26
Speaker 3: It was kind of a haha ha thing.
21:28
Speaker 1: No, I mean, not like that, but it was exuberant,
21:32
Speaker 1: but it was like ha ha ha ha, not.
21:34
Speaker 3: Like my goofy childish laugh.
21:35
Speaker 2: I got you. Yeah. So good movie, and it was
21:39
Speaker 2: one hundred percent based on this so much so that
21:43
Speaker 2: it's funny they went to the trouble of changing the
21:46
Speaker 2: names of the change names that Oliver Sacks had in
21:50
Speaker 2: the book.
21:51
Speaker 3: Wow.
21:51
Speaker 2: So yeah. So Wakenning's actually is pretty faithful in a
21:56
Speaker 2: lot of ways. I mean there's a lot of like
21:57
Speaker 2: movie stuff literary license in there, but yeah, the most part,
22:00
Speaker 2: it's pretty faithful to Oliver Sax's book. And again it's nonfiction,
22:03
Speaker 2: like Sex as a neurologist. Ory was a great neurologist
22:06
Speaker 2: and a great writer too, so he didn't take a
22:08
Speaker 2: lot of literary license as far as I understand. So
22:12
Speaker 2: the movie. Being close to the book means the movie
22:14
Speaker 2: was fairly close to real life. And one of the
22:16
Speaker 2: tests that Oliver Sex conducted was he would demonstrate that
22:21
Speaker 2: these people had demonstrated what's called paradoxical kinesia, where somebody
22:28
Speaker 2: who seemingly can't move and hasn't moved for days, months,
22:33
Speaker 2: however long it was since the last time somebody moved
22:35
Speaker 2: them could suddenly move in a way that they just
22:40
Speaker 2: should not be able to. And the way that he
22:42
Speaker 2: demonstrates it in the movie, and I believe in the
22:44
Speaker 2: book he did this too, was he would toss them
22:47
Speaker 2: a ball, and all of a sudden, somebody who's just
22:50
Speaker 2: sitting there with their hands in the air and their
22:52
Speaker 2: face frozen in this mass, this expressionless mask, just suddenly
22:55
Speaker 2: moves their hand without even moving their eyes and catches
22:59
Speaker 2: the ball. And that was, I think, again, at least
23:03
Speaker 2: in the movie, I haven't read the book, how he
23:06
Speaker 2: identified people in this what they call the chronic hospital
23:10
Speaker 2: that he worked at in the Bronx by by finding
23:14
Speaker 2: somebody who kind of fit these symptoms and then tossing
23:17
Speaker 2: a ball at them. And there's a very cute, funny
23:19
Speaker 2: part where he does it to one person and she
23:21
Speaker 2: gets hit in the face and is like, ah, why'd
23:23
Speaker 2: you do that? She clearly didn't have encephalitis lethargic as
23:28
Speaker 2: pretty cute.
23:29
Speaker 3: It sounded a couple of minutes ago, Like you said,
23:31
Speaker 3: Oliver Sex.
23:32
Speaker 2: I know, I didn't correct myself. You're an all time
23:36
Speaker 2: great conversation analyst though for noticing.
23:38
Speaker 1: That, well, I just I mean, that's a different movie altogether,
23:41
Speaker 1: Oliver Sex.
23:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, also called Awakening.
23:44
Speaker 2: So yeah, God, was that a couple of minutes ago?
23:46
Speaker 2: I've been Have I been talking that much? Oh?
23:48
Speaker 3: I have no sense of time. It might have been
23:50
Speaker 3: ten seconds.
23:51
Speaker 2: That was amazing, Chuck, you've been killing it with the
23:53
Speaker 2: jokes lately.
23:54
Speaker 3: Oh.
23:55
Speaker 2: Thanks.
23:56
Speaker 1: One of the things you mentioned there is like they
23:58
Speaker 1: could catch a ball or something. Thing that would happen,
24:01
Speaker 1: Like he said that if there was an emergency, like
24:03
Speaker 1: another patient falls on the floor, all of a sudden,
24:06
Speaker 1: somebody who like previously has not moved for days or
24:09
Speaker 1: weeks or months might just leap up out of their
24:12
Speaker 1: wheelchair and assist them and then sit back down and
24:15
Speaker 1: go back to their statue pose. And that phenomenon that
24:18
Speaker 1: you're talking about is that's the big key difference between
24:22
Speaker 1: PEP and Parkinson's disease is called kinesia paradoxical, where you're switching,
24:29
Speaker 1: you know, between mobility and immobility, and that is not
24:32
Speaker 1: something that happens generally in Parkinson's.
24:34
Speaker 2: No, but I saw that it does some so yeah,
24:37
Speaker 2: but I think for the most part it's more associated
24:40
Speaker 2: with chronic encephalitis lethargica, right, Yeah, So the original things
24:45
Speaker 2: where this disease, this mysterious disease, incephalitis lethargica, suddenly appeared
24:51
Speaker 2: out of nowhere in nineteen fifteen sixteen, ravaged the world
24:54
Speaker 2: for ten years, and then just vanished. And like you said,
24:58
Speaker 2: let a whole generation of neurologists off the hook for
25:02
Speaker 2: having to explain what it was like. They really tried,
25:07
Speaker 2: like people like Economo really tried to figure this out.
25:11
Speaker 2: I think nine thousand papers were written during this epidemic. Yeah,
25:15
Speaker 2: and there were some things that they kind of were
25:18
Speaker 2: able to pin down, but the big, big questions were
25:22
Speaker 2: just left unanswered. We just don't know. Like one of
25:26
Speaker 2: the big ones is how do you even catch this
25:29
Speaker 2: terrible disease?
25:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, like is it contagious or not? They still didn't
25:33
Speaker 1: have a definitive answer at the end of their study
25:36
Speaker 1: on that evidence on transmission was really really mixed. There
25:40
Speaker 1: were a couple of anecdotal cases that kind of illustrate that.
25:43
Speaker 1: One of them that was among seven members of a
25:47
Speaker 1: family in a small apartment, only one family member got sick.
25:50
Speaker 1: Another case, there was a girl living at something called
25:53
Speaker 1: the Derby and Derbyshire Rescue and Training Home, showed signs
25:58
Speaker 1: of el and then very soon within two weeks, twelve
26:01
Speaker 1: of the twenty one residents got sick. So, you know,
26:04
Speaker 1: both cases, like one looks clearly contagious, the other one
26:08
Speaker 1: doesn't look like it's at all contagious.
26:10
Speaker 3: So they didn't know.
26:11
Speaker 1: Maybe they thought some people might be immune, maybe they're
26:13
Speaker 1: different strains that were contagious or had different levels of contagiousness,
26:18
Speaker 1: or maybe it's just something that they never figured out.
26:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I was wondering too if the twelve of
26:23
Speaker 2: the twenty one residents getting sick at that one home
26:25
Speaker 2: was maybe just a case of mass hysteria or something interesting.
26:29
Speaker 3: Yeah.
26:30
Speaker 2: No, I think half of the people who got sick
26:32
Speaker 2: died within ten days of falling ill, so they were
26:34
Speaker 2: not Yeah, that was not mass hysteria, So that is
26:38
Speaker 2: just a genuine mystery, right, Like, this just doesn't make
26:41
Speaker 2: any kind of sense whatsoever. So they started trying to
26:44
Speaker 2: rule out things they thought it wasn't right. One was
26:47
Speaker 2: environmental causes, so that would make it toxic encephalitis. And
26:51
Speaker 2: I don't even know if we said at the outset,
26:53
Speaker 2: did you I think that encephalitis is swelling of the
26:56
Speaker 2: brain and spinal cord.
26:58
Speaker 3: Oh no, Okay, So.
27:01
Speaker 2: I'm sure everybody got like a pretty good idea that
27:03
Speaker 2: encephalitis is something bad that you don't want to have.
27:06
Speaker 2: But what it is is a condition where your brain
27:09
Speaker 2: and or your spinal cord swells and it can start
27:13
Speaker 2: taking on water, and from doing that, all sorts of
27:15
Speaker 2: terrible things can happen. The thing is, encephalitis is not
27:19
Speaker 2: just specific to encephalitis lethargica. A lot of different things
27:24
Speaker 2: can make your brain and central nervous system swell. A
27:28
Speaker 2: disturbing amount of things can make that happen, actually if
27:30
Speaker 2: you stop and think about it. And one of those
27:32
Speaker 2: things is environmental toxins. So that's toxic encephalitis. And that
27:37
Speaker 2: got ruled out very quickly because there just was no
27:39
Speaker 2: pattern whatsoever where everybody was exposed to you know, like
27:47
Speaker 2: a Tesseract made of kryptonite or something like that for
27:51
Speaker 2: our nerd fans.
27:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's good.
27:54
Speaker 2: I tried to touch you as bone just screwed it
27:56
Speaker 2: up royally, So I'm sorry. I think I may have
27:59
Speaker 2: just conflated did DC and Marvel and.
28:03
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, yeah, distractice Marvel?
28:05
Speaker 2: Dude, No, I love it.
28:08
Speaker 3: I love it.
28:08
Speaker 1: Man.
28:10
Speaker 3: You should meld those Superman meets Thanos. Sure, I want
28:15
Speaker 3: to see those dudes fight.
28:16
Speaker 2: Oh it'd be great. I'm sure that would be a
28:19
Speaker 2: really interesting fight to watch.
28:20
Speaker 1: Somebody's going to write in and say, actually, guys, it
28:22
Speaker 1: happened in nineteen eighty seven, when.
28:26
Speaker 3: You know, dude put out a comic.
28:28
Speaker 2: I suspect that those people aren't going to speak to
28:30
Speaker 2: us any longer. I think you're right.
28:33
Speaker 1: Uh So, like you said, they rule that out, the
28:35
Speaker 1: toxic exposure. Then they moved on to an infectious kind
28:41
Speaker 1: of possibility, infectious encephalitis in fact, and that can be
28:48
Speaker 1: you know, and infectious and cephalitis is a thing, So
28:52
Speaker 1: it's not like we're we think it's that that was
28:53
Speaker 1: already a thing. It can be secondary to bacterial or
28:56
Speaker 1: fungal or viral or parasitic infection to use virus, it's
29:01
Speaker 1: the most common type of encephalitis. It could be like
29:04
Speaker 1: from the herpes virus, or maybe measles or West Nile,
29:09
Speaker 1: even influenza. And considering how this went on during the
29:13
Speaker 1: Spanish Flu initially, which happened in nineteen eighteen, and there
29:17
Speaker 1: were flu like symptoms, they thought that, you know, this
29:20
Speaker 1: probably early on at least was an influenza led infectious encephalitis.
29:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that was I think von Economo's leading theory,
29:31
Speaker 2: which makes a lot of sense because they tracked with
29:32
Speaker 2: one another, like you said, at least the start. So
29:36
Speaker 2: was this just some horrible strain of Spanish flu that
29:40
Speaker 2: managed to continue on for years after Spanish Flu? And
29:43
Speaker 2: I think that was incontrovertibly proven incorrect, because actually, in
29:50
Speaker 2: when I did The End of the World, I talked
29:52
Speaker 2: about this guy who went up and dug up the
29:54
Speaker 2: corpse of an Inuit woman who had died from Spanish
29:57
Speaker 2: flu to get enough of the genome of it to
30:00
Speaker 2: so bring the Spanish flu back to life to study it.
30:02
Speaker 2: It's one of the most breathtakingly arrogant moments in all
30:06
Speaker 2: of science for somebody to do that. But the reason
30:09
Speaker 2: we know that encephalitis lethargica wasn't caused by the Spanish
30:13
Speaker 2: flu is because we had the Spanish flu genome and
30:16
Speaker 2: we couldn't find any Spanish flu RNA in like collections
30:21
Speaker 2: of tissue samples of brains of people who definitely died
30:24
Speaker 2: from encephalitis lethargica, Spanish flu wasn't there. Ergo, it wasn't
30:29
Speaker 2: Spanish flu.
30:31
Speaker 1: And because Josh is always too humble to say so.
30:33
Speaker 1: After an End of the World reference everyone if you
30:36
Speaker 1: don't know, Josh had a great solo album, a eight
30:40
Speaker 1: part or ten part.
30:42
Speaker 2: It was a ten part subtitled Waxy Flexibility.
30:47
Speaker 1: The End of the World with Josh Clark, where he
30:50
Speaker 1: one episode at a time, examined ten I can't think
30:55
Speaker 1: of the word existential risks that could humanity, some of
31:01
Speaker 1: which are currently underway.
31:03
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Chuck, I appreciate that was really nice
31:05
Speaker 2: to say.
31:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeh, very great.
31:06
Speaker 1: You got to be a smarty pants, But even if
31:09
Speaker 1: you're not as smarty pants, you should still give it
31:10
Speaker 1: a shot. I think because I gave it a shot
31:12
Speaker 1: and I'm not as smarty pants.
31:13
Speaker 2: Hey, you are smarty pants, but yes, smarty pants are no.
31:16
Speaker 2: I think everybody can be equally scared by this.
31:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, you did live shows too, So if you have
31:21
Speaker 1: a time machine on your hands, go back and see
31:22
Speaker 1: one of those while you're at.
31:23
Speaker 2: It, and come talk to us. If you have an
31:26
Speaker 2: actual working time machine as well, it'd be pretty neat.
31:29
Speaker 1: Streptococcal infection was another possibility. At one point there was
31:34
Speaker 1: some data that showed infection with streptococo bacteria was in
31:39
Speaker 1: front of some of these cases of el and In
31:42
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one, our old pal, doctor von Ekonomo, did
31:47
Speaker 1: an experiment and streptococcus vaccination actually led to el and
31:53
Speaker 1: el like condition and dogs.
31:55
Speaker 2: Yeah it's just sad, but yeah, the thing is the
31:58
Speaker 2: thing that makes it even more sad. It wasn't definitive.
32:01
Speaker 2: They weren't like, oh, it's a strep infection. It was like,
32:04
Speaker 2: I guess it could have been. There was another group
32:08
Speaker 2: called the Mathieson Commission that studied encephalitis lethargica. Because a
32:13
Speaker 2: guy was sensibly by the last name of Mathieson, I
32:16
Speaker 2: couldn't find who it was. He was a wealthy businessman
32:19
Speaker 2: from America who had been struck down by encephalitis lethargica.
32:23
Speaker 2: Believe he had gotten better, but not fully, and so
32:27
Speaker 2: he used some money to try to get to the
32:29
Speaker 2: bottom of this and funded this commission for thirteen years.
32:33
Speaker 2: They put out four different reports and basically at the
32:36
Speaker 2: end said maybe herpes. We don't know, And he said,
32:40
Speaker 2: your finding's cut off. I've gotten into Sherlock home societies.
32:46
Speaker 2: That's who I'm finding now.
32:47
Speaker 1: At the end of all that dough for that many years,
32:49
Speaker 1: you come back with maybe herpes?
32:51
Speaker 3: Are you kidding me?
32:52
Speaker 2: At give me herpes too? That reminds me when I
32:56
Speaker 2: was a kid. I'll never forget one of the first
32:59
Speaker 2: headlines that ever sunk in with me because I was
33:01
Speaker 2: a Who's the Boss fan a little bit at the time. Okay,
33:05
Speaker 2: it had to be The Inquire or something, but it
33:07
Speaker 2: was Tony Danza gave me herpies. And I looked, like
33:12
Speaker 2: just yesterday to see if Tony Dance I actually had
33:15
Speaker 2: ever given anyone herpes, and it does not seem to
33:18
Speaker 2: be the case. I don't believe Tony Dance it has herpes,
33:21
Speaker 2: So that that headline was totally made up, and I
33:24
Speaker 2: hope Tony Danza got some money from that for suing
33:26
Speaker 2: the Inquirer.
33:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, we should issue that correction too. But you
33:29
Speaker 1: got that Tony Danza band name wrong?
33:33
Speaker 2: Oh I did?
33:33
Speaker 3: In the metal episodes.
33:35
Speaker 2: What do you know what the correct one was?
33:37
Speaker 3: Well, what do you what did you call it?
33:38
Speaker 2: I think I called it the Tony Danza tap dance Experience.
33:41
Speaker 2: Is that not it?
33:42
Speaker 1: I think if that's what you said, I think it
33:44
Speaker 1: was a tap dance extravaganza. Okay, or it's the other
33:48
Speaker 1: way around. Whichever one you said was.
33:50
Speaker 2: Wrong, that's fine. I can live with that.
33:53
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, we had a few metal people right in
33:54
Speaker 3: about that.
33:55
Speaker 1: So can't you know, can't not correct the Tony dance
33:57
Speaker 1: a tap dance extravagance.
33:58
Speaker 2: I bet they were nice though, Like to person, pretty
34:00
Speaker 2: much all the metal fans that wrote in. Yeah, yeah,
34:04
Speaker 2: I said, even the ones correcting us really cute. That
34:06
Speaker 2: was great.
34:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the metal way it is. All right. Shall
34:10
Speaker 3: we take our other break?
34:18
Speaker 2: Yeah sure, all right, we'll be right back.
34:20
Speaker 1: Wait, all right, So we mentioned some people studying, you know,
34:50
Speaker 1: different causes back in the day. They never could find
34:53
Speaker 1: anything out, like we said, and for about thirty years
34:55
Speaker 1: they just kind of left it there, and it was
34:58
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen sixties when neurology researchers that we're
35:01
Speaker 1: working on Parkinson's really hit on it when they developed
35:06
Speaker 1: el dopa or levo dopa, which is a substitute for dopamine,
35:11
Speaker 1: which is the missing neurotransmitter and Parkinson's disease. And it
35:14
Speaker 1: was released in nineteen sixty seven and it brought akinetic
35:18
Speaker 1: Parkinson's disease patients back to life. And if you've seen
35:22
Speaker 1: the movie Awakenings, that's basically a big storyline. That's where
35:26
Speaker 1: it picks up is when Oliver Sacks scores some el dopa.
35:30
Speaker 2: He did off a guy selling it on the corner
35:34
Speaker 2: below Beth Abraham Hospital exactly. Yeah. So he finally starts
35:39
Speaker 2: with Leonard Low, who's Robert de Niro, not the patient's
35:42
Speaker 2: real name, obviously. But there's just this amazing transformation where
35:47
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, these people again, who are these
35:49
Speaker 2: frozen statue like people and have been for decades of
35:52
Speaker 2: their lives, suddenly are like aware and talking and like
35:57
Speaker 2: focusing their attention on you. And one guy's playing the
36:00
Speaker 2: piano and they're like going out on field trips. Now
36:02
Speaker 2: it's like they were just completely broad out of it,
36:05
Speaker 2: and that's supposedly was very much the case with people
36:10
Speaker 2: with actual Parkinson's disease, like they responded beautifully to el dopa.
36:15
Speaker 2: But one of the reasons, one of the indicators that
36:18
Speaker 2: post encephalatic parkinson ism and Parkinson's disease are different, is
36:23
Speaker 2: that the people in Awakenings, the people with encephalitis lethargica,
36:29
Speaker 2: they responded well for a little while and then they
36:32
Speaker 2: started to show other symptoms that really kind of for
36:36
Speaker 2: some of them, it basically meant you can't take al
36:39
Speaker 2: dopa anymore, and incredibly sadly, like one of the most
36:43
Speaker 2: sad things I can think of, they were left to
36:46
Speaker 2: just go back to yeah, frozen statue state again. And
36:51
Speaker 2: don't forget there is a great level of consciousness within
36:55
Speaker 2: them when they're in the state. So they came out
36:57
Speaker 2: of that state in which they were conscious, came to
37:00
Speaker 2: full consciousness and full interactivity and maybe even left the
37:02
Speaker 2: hospital on a field trip and then had to go
37:05
Speaker 2: back to their frozen statue stay again conscious of this
37:08
Speaker 2: whole experience.
37:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, very heartbreaking to see.
37:11
Speaker 1: In that movie, there was one case of a woman
37:15
Speaker 1: who is this the rose of which you spoke of
37:18
Speaker 1: to me?
37:19
Speaker 3: Privately.
37:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was Rose and then Lucy was her name
37:24
Speaker 2: in the movie for some reason.
37:26
Speaker 1: Okay, well, this woman just one of the cases of
37:30
Speaker 1: Oliver Sacks. She came out of it, and she basically
37:34
Speaker 1: described like being aware of everything that was happening for
37:37
Speaker 1: decades and understanding what was happening, but just not feeling
37:42
Speaker 1: a connection to it, like there was this weird disconnect.
37:46
Speaker 1: She knew about Pearl Harbor, she described knowing about the
37:49
Speaker 1: assassination of Kennedy John f that is, and she said
37:53
Speaker 1: that it just didn't seem real. She said, nothing has
37:55
Speaker 1: seemed real since nineteen twenty six when I got the
37:57
Speaker 1: encephalitis and came to a stop. I know him sixty
38:00
Speaker 1: four now, and this is nineteen sixty nine, and that
38:03
Speaker 1: I'm an elderly woman in a bizarre situation in a
38:05
Speaker 1: chronic hospital. But I feel like I'm twenty one and
38:08
Speaker 1: I feel like it's nineteen twenty six.
38:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, can you imagine?
38:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, And very sadly, she was one of the ones
38:14
Speaker 2: who did not like have her symptoms with al dopo
38:18
Speaker 2: or too extreme to continue on taking al dopa.
38:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, and some people you know, came out and were
38:25
Speaker 1: just overjoyed and elated with this kind of thing, obviously,
38:29
Speaker 1: and some people came out, and obviously you could also
38:32
Speaker 1: see it had a very hard time with lost decades.
38:36
Speaker 1: It could not have been an easy thing to accept
38:38
Speaker 1: either way. The movie that there is good news. There
38:42
Speaker 1: is a bit of a silver lining because the movie
38:44
Speaker 1: does not cover the fact that after this a lot
38:48
Speaker 1: of the patients finally regulated with the el dopa and
38:52
Speaker 1: were able to leave at least lead compared to sort
38:55
Speaker 1: of their previous life, a somewhat healthy life, like they
38:59
Speaker 1: weren't in that statue s locked in state. They might
39:02
Speaker 1: not have fully recovered, but they led an okay life.
39:05
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, And they do mention that at the end,
39:09
Speaker 2: and those I guess postcripts where they talk about how
39:14
Speaker 2: they continued on experimenting and some people kind of worked
39:17
Speaker 2: out with a little bit so, but they don't they
39:19
Speaker 2: don't show it in the movie. The movie's all sad
39:21
Speaker 2: at the end. It's so sad, and yeah, oh my god,
39:26
Speaker 2: just go watch Awakenings again. I even watched it. I
39:29
Speaker 2: accidentally watched Patch Adams first, and I wanted to watch
39:32
Speaker 2: Awakenings so bad. I still watched it after Patch Adams
39:37
Speaker 2: after Zoolander, and then I finally watched The Awakenings. I was
39:39
Speaker 2: up till like four in the morning today last night.
39:42
Speaker 3: I never I never saw Patch Adams. It's that was
39:46
Speaker 3: sex too there right, and then.
39:47
Speaker 2: No, it was just what it was Williams too. It
39:49
Speaker 2: was Awakenings. I'll tell you that.
39:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, I need to check that out. It's funny.
39:55
Speaker 1: I met a guy named Leonard Lowe one time years ago,
39:58
Speaker 1: and the only thing I could think in my head was,
40:01
Speaker 1: my name is Leonard Lowe? Like I just remember Daniro
40:04
Speaker 1: saying that you didn't say that to him, no, because
40:07
Speaker 1: I figured, you know, like our listener Robert Paulson, he's
40:10
Speaker 1: probably side of his jokes.
40:11
Speaker 2: I never stopped saying that to Robert Paulson. I can't
40:14
Speaker 2: help myself.
40:16
Speaker 1: Uh so, what about these days? What do we think
40:18
Speaker 1: about el of medically speaking?
40:20
Speaker 2: Well, so, one of the things that we did learn
40:23
Speaker 2: that we still don't fully understand, but was something that
40:25
Speaker 2: they recognized with el dopa and the study of the
40:30
Speaker 2: patients before they were administered al dopa is that while
40:34
Speaker 2: you're in a like this frozen state, like like I
40:38
Speaker 2: said earlier, somebody like throws a ball at you, or
40:40
Speaker 2: like you said, somebody sees an emergency, they can suddenly
40:43
Speaker 2: move like normal and then they go back to that
40:45
Speaker 2: frozen state afterward. They found that it's not just like
40:48
Speaker 2: an emergency like a ball coming at you or your
40:51
Speaker 2: friend laying on the floor because they fell down, but
40:53
Speaker 2: things like music, human touch, even like obnoxious sounds like
40:58
Speaker 2: a siren or something can basically prompt the person to
41:02
Speaker 2: start moving again and like come back out of that
41:04
Speaker 2: frozen catatonia mutism. And that was one of the things
41:10
Speaker 2: that they found people could do on al dopa too,
41:13
Speaker 2: Like even with the extreme like tremors or inability to
41:19
Speaker 2: control the movement of your mouth or eyes, those could
41:22
Speaker 2: be tamed by the same things by stimulating your brain
41:26
Speaker 2: in some other way. And there is the story of
41:28
Speaker 2: a guy who was a cobbler by trade before he
41:31
Speaker 2: had gotten sick. Oh yeah, and the after el dopa
41:35
Speaker 2: came along, he asked for like a cobbler's bench, and
41:37
Speaker 2: the hospital staff got him one, and when he was
41:39
Speaker 2: working at his cobblers bench, he was able to like
41:41
Speaker 2: hold like nails in his teeth and like nail the
41:44
Speaker 2: heel of the shoe with these little tiny nails and
41:47
Speaker 2: just work and control the symptoms because there's something in
41:51
Speaker 2: the brain that was overriding the symptoms. We have no
41:55
Speaker 2: idea why. We just know that that was part of
41:57
Speaker 2: this whole thing. There's some some way that the these
42:01
Speaker 2: problematic symptoms can be overridden by some other region of
42:04
Speaker 2: the brain taking importance or precedents over that, which is
42:08
Speaker 2: just bizarre. Like from start to finish, this is one
42:12
Speaker 2: of the most bizarre diseases in history.
42:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Did you also watch Tremors by accident?
42:19
Speaker 2: Now? That would have been very pleasant. That's one of
42:21
Speaker 2: my favorite movies.
42:23
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, the sun's coming up and you
42:24
Speaker 1: still haven't seen awakenings. So getting back to the modern
42:30
Speaker 1: perspectives and what we think medically these days. In the
42:33
Speaker 1: last seventy five years, like I said, it completely in
42:35
Speaker 1: a way, they kind of don't know. In the last
42:37
Speaker 1: seventy five years, there has only been about eighty case
42:39
Speaker 1: reports where it looks like it might be el They
42:44
Speaker 1: call it like an eel like presentation, you know, the
42:48
Speaker 1: hyper somnolence, maybe ocular paralysis, maybe some of those neuropsychiatric symptoms.
42:54
Speaker 1: But they're really not sure because you know, the cases
42:57
Speaker 1: are pretty varied, and the symptoms are pretty varied. And
43:00
Speaker 1: again they you know, all they have is sort of
43:02
Speaker 1: these case studies from before. They never landed on anything,
43:05
Speaker 1: so it's hard to tell if this is still going
43:08
Speaker 1: on at all or not. There's no like effective treatment.
43:12
Speaker 1: You know, they still use al dopa I think, right, Yeah,
43:14
Speaker 1: and that's still in the scene. Yeah, so for the
43:17
Speaker 1: tremors and rigidity and stuff like that sometimes ect for
43:21
Speaker 1: if you have like pretty extreme psychiatric symptoms. But for
43:26
Speaker 1: Van Economo's work, he got he never won, but he
43:31
Speaker 1: was nominated three times for a Nobel Prize.
43:33
Speaker 3: Pretty good, yeah, for sure.
43:35
Speaker 2: And remember he also originally suspected that it was some
43:38
Speaker 2: sort of infection. Yeah, he thought Spanish flu wasn't Spanish flu.
43:42
Speaker 2: But they do think that it's probable now that it
43:46
Speaker 2: is the result of an autoimmune disorder triggered by an infection. Yeah.
43:50
Speaker 2: So what that would amount to is that you are
43:54
Speaker 2: infected by maybe it is tripped, maybe it is herpes,
43:56
Speaker 2: maybe it is influenza. We don't know. But something that
44:00
Speaker 2: resembles proteins found in different regions of your brain trains
44:06
Speaker 2: your body to attack those proteins in your brain. So you,
44:09
Speaker 2: it triggers an autoimmune disorder, and those proteins are only
44:12
Speaker 2: found on specific regions of the brain that when you
44:16
Speaker 2: step back and look at what those regions do, they
44:19
Speaker 2: control the symptoms that you see in people with encephalitis lethargica.
44:26
Speaker 2: I just sounded like Tim Curry and Rocky Horror Picture Show.
44:29
Speaker 3: Get on the slab.
44:33
Speaker 2: That's good. I forgot how good your impression is of
44:36
Speaker 2: doctor Frankenfurter.
44:38
Speaker 3: Oh, well, you know I met the man. He held
44:40
Speaker 3: my cat.
44:41
Speaker 2: That's right. He said your cat was naughty.
44:43
Speaker 3: Right, I said he had dramatic ears.
44:45
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, but also naughty.
44:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, naughty. Get on the slab, laurn. I got
44:54
Speaker 3: nothing else.
44:55
Speaker 2: Oh okay, let's see. I guess I got nothing else either.
44:58
Speaker 2: That's it. We don't we I don't know they answer
45:00
Speaker 2: to all of this, and I don't know when we
45:02
Speaker 2: ever will. But it's just it's so fascinating that you
45:06
Speaker 2: have to stop and remind yourself like this actually happened
45:09
Speaker 2: to people, and that do you realize how terrifying the
45:12
Speaker 2: whole thing really is? Yeah, well, Chuck said yeah twice
45:17
Speaker 2: within seven seconds, which automatically means, oh well, no, he
45:21
Speaker 2: derailed it. You have to say yeah one more time,
45:24
Speaker 2: hurry yeah, Okay, now we're back on to listener, ma'am.
45:30
Speaker 1: Uh this is you're gonna like this one, Josh, I think, hey, guys,
45:33
Speaker 1: it is about the A trax. I always learned something
45:36
Speaker 1: from you sometimes unexpectedly, you guys and the A track
45:38
Speaker 1: short stuff. You talked about kart being short for cartridge
45:43
Speaker 1: and sparked a memory. I'm from Buffalo, you see, and
45:46
Speaker 1: I used to listen to a radio announcer called Iron
45:48
Speaker 1: Mike Benson. He famously had what he called and Jamie says,
45:55
Speaker 1: sorry to you, specifically Josh about this, okay, where Mike
45:59
Speaker 1: Iron Mike ben would say that he had the heinous
46:02
Speaker 1: anus fart cart and he would use it to play
46:06
Speaker 1: various part sounds and strategically place them over top of
46:09
Speaker 1: the top of whatever song's happened to be getting played
46:11
Speaker 1: on the air at the moment. Always imagine the word
46:13
Speaker 1: kart at the time was referring to like a basket
46:16
Speaker 1: on wheels that contained a bunch of separate tapes.
46:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, of fart.
46:19
Speaker 3: Sounds, now it all makes sense.
46:21
Speaker 1: It was a tape recording, but because it was a
46:23
Speaker 1: looped tape with multiple tracks on it. He could cue
46:26
Speaker 1: whatever selection he wanted much quicker than you could with
46:30
Speaker 1: a linear cassette tape. So it was the analog way
46:33
Speaker 1: to do that sort of thing before a digital soundboard
46:35
Speaker 1: was used and invented. Thank you for all the useless interest,
46:39
Speaker 1: grabbing information and uselessness in quotes, by the way, Okay,
46:44
Speaker 1: that is only useless until you can relate it to
46:46
Speaker 1: something else. Podcasts have come and gone, but your show
46:49
Speaker 1: is the one I haven't gotten tired of.
46:52
Speaker 3: And my sister Ashley agrees. Keep it up, boys. That
46:54
Speaker 3: is Jamie Lynn Bayer awesome.
46:57
Speaker 2: Thank you, Jamie Lynn, and thank you to your sister Ashley,
46:59
Speaker 2: who sensibly listens as well. And the whole Bear clan.
47:03
Speaker 2: How about that?
47:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, the clan at the Cave Bear.
47:06
Speaker 2: I thought that as well. Yeah, if you want to
47:10
Speaker 2: be like the clan of the Cave Bear and write
47:11
Speaker 2: in to let us know how much you like our
47:14
Speaker 2: show and or we triggered some memory in you that
47:17
Speaker 2: helped you put things together, and or whatever else you
47:20
Speaker 2: want to say. We love that kind of thing. You
47:23
Speaker 2: can send it to us via email at stuff podcast
47:26
Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio dot com.
47:30
Speaker 3: Stuff You should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
47:33
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
47:36
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.