Transcript

Episode 746: The Sleeping Sickness Epidemic (1919-1930)

From Morbid | Podcast · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 52 min · 9,902 words · 274 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Episode 746: The Sleeping Sickness Epidemic (1919-1930)", an episode of Morbid | Podcast published January 12, 2026 (52 min, about 9,902 words). It mentions 25 people, works and ideas, including Encphilitis Lethargica, Dr. Constantine von Economo, World War I, Spanish Flu, Dr. Renee Crus.

What this episode is about

The discussion centers around the impact and history of the sleeping sickness epidemic that occurred from 1919 to 1930, exploring its causes, effects on society, and lasting implications. The hosts also share personal anecdotes and reflections, creating a balance between serious historical topics and lighthearted banter.

Key takeaways

  • Transform your mornings with jazz—because waking up shouldn't feel like a morning meeting.
  • Socializing exhausts the introverted soul—balance a weekend of fun with Monday’s recovery nap.
  • Romanticize mundane tasks: Pretty glasses and old-timey jazz make breakfast feel like a 1920s gala.
  • Skip the morning podcast; even the best voices can't compete with the smoothness of a saxophone.
  • Life's too short to save the fancy things—wear the silk, drink from the crystal, live lavishly!

Who speaks in this episode?

  • Ash (Host) · 26 min speaking
  • Elena (Host) · 26 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: Gatsby
  2. – 10:00: Gatsby, World War I, The Nona
  3. – 15:00: Encphilitis Lethargica, Dr. Renee Crus, Molly Caldwell Crosby, Romania
  4. – 20:00: Encphilitis Lethargica, Dr. Renee Crus, The Nona
  5. – 25:00: Encphilitis Lethargica, World War I, Spanish Flu, Molly Caldwell Crosby
  6. – 30:00: Dr. Frederick Tney, Encphilitis Lethargica, The Nona, The Craft
  7. – 35:00: Encphilitis Lethargica, Spanish Flu, The Nona, SpongeBob
  8. – 40:00: Encphilitis Lethargica, Montreal, Los Angeles, Chester Jones
  9. – 45:00: Encphilitis Lethargica, Beth Abraham Hospital, L-dopa, Philip Leather
  10. – 50:00: Spanish Flu, The Radium Girls

Notable quotes from "Episode 746: The Sleeping Sickness Epidemic (1919-1930)"

  • So there was you know a war was raging across Europe and Dr. Constantine vonamo him.
    about World War I · at
  • Documented cases of the disease appeared in 1916 at Vonomo's clinic in Vienna and at the Paris clinic of Dr. Renee Crus.
    about Dr. Renee Crus · at
  • Oh, man. And it was probably just like popping off all over those ships. Now between 1917 and 1930 nearly 1 million people contracted encphilitis lethargica and of those roughly half died as a result of their symptoms.
    about Encphilitis Lethargica · at
  • A virus that raged for more than two years and killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide. As Molly Caldwell Crosby said, In Europe and elsewhere, few people worried about the littleknown epidemic of sleep. They were.
    about Spanish Flu · at
  • In the end, his recommendations were just basically ways to make Ruth more physically comfortable.
    about Dr. Frederick Tney · at
  • It happens. One hospital worker told a reporter, This reluctance to diagnose encphilitis lethargica does not discredit the Montreal physicians in any way. To determine absolutely that a patient was suffering from a new disease.
    about Montreal · at
  • In Los Angeles, for example, one doctor described having been referred a patient from quote the leading alienist in Los Angeles.
    about Los Angeles · at
  • Started working with encphilitis lethargic coma or catatonic patients at Beth Abraham Hospital in the Bronx. In his experiments with the amino acid L-dopa, Sax found that many…
    about Beth Abraham Hospital · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Dr. Constantine von Economo — Person · Referenced expert / key historical figure · 18 mentions
    He is presented as one of the first physicians to formally identify and publish on encephalitis lethargica and to theorize hypothalamic involvement, advancing early neurology.
  • Dr. Renee Crus — Person · Referenced expert / early identifier · 2 mentions · first at
    Presented as the Paris physician whose clinic saw early cases and who published one of the first formal papers identifying the disease alongside von Economo.
  • Molly Caldwell Crosby — Person · Referenced author/source · 2 mentions · first at
    Her writing is quoted multiple times to describe symptoms, patient presentation, and how the epidemic was overshadowed by Spanish flu.
    According to author Molly Caldwell Crosby, quote, some had fever, others did not. Most complained of headache and nausea. Strangest of all was how much these soldiers slept.
  • Dr. Frederick Tney — Person · Referenced clinician (New York case) · 2 mentions · first at
    Introduced as a prominent New York neurologist who evaluated a teenage patient ('Ruth') and recognized encephalitis lethargica but lacked effective treatment.
  • Philip Leather — Person · Referenced patient / last survivor · 1 mention · first at
    Presented as the last known survivor of the epidemic, living for decades in a trance-like state; his death and brain donation underscore the enduring mystery.
    Okay. In 2002, the last known survivor of the encphilitis lethargic epidemic, Philip Leather, died in London at the age of 82.
  • Dr. AJ Hall — Person · Referenced clinician (England cases) · 1 mention · first at
    Cited as an English physician documenting early UK cases and noting atypical presentation (muscle weakness without obvious sleepiness).
    Just as perplexing and unable to be defined as it had been when it first appeared in France and Italy. Among the first cases reported came from physician Dr. AJ Hall, who by…
  • Adolf Ash — Person · 13 mentions
  • Chester Jones — Person · 1 mention · first at
    It's almost like that. in one case, a local railroad worker, Chester Jones, came down with symptoms and slept for 10 days straight.
  • Frank Martin — Person · 1 mention · first at
    York, the first deaths from sleeping sickness were reported, starting with steamship captain Frank Martin, who'd been diagnosed with encphilitis lethargica just 5 days earlier.…
  • Dr. RR Dormashkin — Person · 1 mention · first at
    According to Dr. RR Dormashkin, by 1927, the acute cases occurring in England were often so mild that the acute phase would pass without much notice. But the long-term effects could often be quite.
  • Oliver Saxs — Person · 1 mention · first at
    And those who did survive were left with what neurologist Oliver Saxs described as extraordinary crises. That could include the quote simultaneous virtually instantaneous onset of Parkinsonism, catatonia, ticks, obsessions, and 30 or.
  • Alexander Mor — Person · 1 mention

Companies & orgs

  • Beth Abraham Hospital — Company · Clinical site for later treatment experiments · 1 mention · first at
    Identified as the Bronx hospital where Oliver Sacks treated long-term encephalitis lethargica patients and experimented with L-dopa in the late 1960s.

Products & tech

  • L-dopa — Product · Treatment technology discussed · 1 mention · first at
    Presented as the intervention Oliver Sacks used to temporarily relieve Parkinsonism-like symptoms in post-encephalitic patients, linking the epidemic to later neurological therapeutics.
    Parkinson's-like symptoms of encphilitis lethargica, including muscle rigidity, spasms, and tremors, could find relief, like incredible relief with this.

Concepts & topics

  • Encphilitis Lethargica — Concept · Core topic · 21 mentions · first at
    The episode is a historical deep dive into the mysterious early-20th-century 'sleeping sickness' epidemic, its symptoms, spread, and the enduring uncertainty about its cause.
  • Spanish Flu — Concept · Contextual comparator / competing pandemic · 4 mentions · first at
    Spanish flu is discussed as the dominant global crisis that overshadowed encephalitis lethargica and as a hypothesized (later weakened) causal link.
  • The Nona — Concept · Nickname/folk label for the disease · 4 mentions · first at
    A recurring motif: the illness is jokingly and historically framed as 'the grandmother/the nona,' reflecting confusion and folklore around the syndrome.
    Was or is. And at one point I think it was called like the grandmother like the nona because it was like that's it. She's just the grandmother because it was like a sleeping disease like it was it's so crazy.
  • The Radium Girls — Concept · Comparative historical case · 1 mention · first at
    Invoked as an analogy for an environmental/toxic exposure explanation, supporting speculation that encephalitis lethargica might have been exacerbated by a widespread product or contaminant.
    And it just makes me think of like the Radium Girls case like how they were like painting their mouths with radium and then all that crazy [ __ ] happened.
  • Gatsby — Concept · Mood-setting cultural reference · 3 mentions · first at
    Used in the intro as a 'Gatsby-esque' jazz aesthetic that transitions the hosts into the early-1900s setting of the episode's history topic.
    But you know speaking of Gatsby jazz, we're going to be in the early 1900s during this.

Places & events

  • World War I — Event · Historical driver of spread · 2 mentions · first at
    The war provides the setting for early cases and is framed as enabling spread via troop cycling, battlefield conditions, and mass movement of people across regions.
  • Montreal — Place · Example of public-health messaging · 2 mentions · first at
    Montreal is cited for a dismissive/diplomatic stance on diagnosis, reflecting uncertainty and reluctance to label a 'new disease.'
  • Romania — Place · Possible origin location (hypothesized) · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as a suspected starting point (1915) for the epidemic, illustrating uncertainty about the disease's origin.
    It's kind of unknown where it first appeared. The epidemic of the early 20th century is thought to have started in 1915 Romania, but more recent studies of this disease have…
  • Los Angeles — Place · Example location for misdiagnosis · 1 mention · first at
    Used as an example where a patient was initially diagnosed with catatonia by an 'alienist,' later reconsidered as encephalitis lethargica, showing diagnostic confusion.

Media & podcasts

  • The Craft — Media · Pop-culture analogy · 1 mention · first at
    Referenced to convey the unsettling euphoria/mania-like behavior seen in some patients, making symptoms vivid for listeners.
    What the [ __ ] Like what makes you think of Nancy at the end of the craft?
  • SpongeBob — Media · Pop-culture analogy · 1 mention · first at
    Used humorously to illustrate the instinct to stay indoors during outbreaks and the public's fear/avoidance behavior.
    Information. Like they have like very little information. There's this episode of Spongebob where he just like is not going to go outside and he sings this song where he's like indoors.

Full transcript with timestamps

Hey weirdos. I'm Ash. And I'm Elena. And this is Mor. This is Morbid. Yeah. Are you correcting me?

Yeah. What? Are you correcting me? Yeah. It's Morin. Beyond. It's Morbid. He said, "No, it's just [ __ ] Morbid." I'm like over tired today.

I know. I can You're You're a little a little off. Feels. No, I'm like I'm happy. I'm just I did so many social things this weekend. And I'm usually not like that social of a gal.

Yeah. And I social Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday. And then you social close to the sun.

Yeah. I didn't feel well when I woke up this morning because my body said, "What the [ __ ] were you doing this weekend?" I

said, "Calm down." My body said, "Lie down." And I said, "I have to go to work." I must record.

I have to. Um, yeah. I didn't I didn't do a crazy amount of socializing. No, we did your birthday dinner.

A birthday dinner. Surprise birthday dinner. I John was planning that for like weeks and I worked with you that whole day and I literally as I was leaving almost went, "All right, see you tonight." And then I could have ruined the whole thing, but I didn't

cuz I had no idea cuz I got sick on my birthday. So apparently scheduled for that weekend but had to be pushed.

It was the day that I forced you to go to urgent care. Yeah. And I was like, guess we're not going to dinner tonight

cuz you're going to urgent care. Exactly. You will be at urgent care probably for a while.

But yeah, so that was great. It was really sweet. John had like this whole menu put together

and he wrote witches never age. Yeah. He's such a sweetie. And Elena thought I did that. I said I didn't even do that.

I did. And then John was like no I did. I said I just texted a few people and said can you make it?

Can you make it? Can you come since we've had to change it 100 times? Yeah. No, it was great. It was wonderful. It was exactly what I wanted.

I'm glad. My favorite restaurant with your favorite people. With my favorite people.

Most of them. Most of them. Yeah. With some of my favorite people. Yeah. I will say.

Yeah. Um but yeah. So, you know, I think I'm 2026. I'm liking it. Feels like a time.

I'm loving it so far. I'm loving it. 2026. I'm just trying to h Oh, I have a hack for all of you.

Tell me. Have you sent this to me yet? I have not. So, I wanted This is a hack for everybody in the room and listening

cuz I've tried it. I wanted to try it a few times to see if it actually made a difference.

So, I've been trying to slowly wake up earlier. Um because, you know, you fall out of it during the holidays and all that [ __ ] Everything gets all

fully out of it. So, I've been trying to wake up even earlier because I like to wake up before the house wakes up so I can have my quiet time, get some [ __ ] done. And now when I wake up, I got myself I got it on Amazon. It's just like a Bluetooth speaker that looks like an oldtimey radio.

Mhm. And I play slow Gatsby-esque jazzonic while I make my coffee, while I open the shades.

Listen to you. while I get stuff ready for breakfast. I play slow Gatsbyesque jazz. That's

I made a playlist. I don't do that in the morning. I do that at night when I cook dinner.

See, I recommend it for a lot of times. Yeah, I love it for dinner because it's like your day is slowing down. You're unwinding. It kind of like romanticizes your dinner making.

That is exactly what I was going to say. It I've been you. So, I started doing that and it re What a nice way to wake up cuz you're not listening to someone talk at you. I love a podcast.

I love it. I do too. But sometimes when I first wake up, I need like a moment before any voices are really like telling me things.

Yeah. And so this is like no voices until they start singing about some love or something.

There you go. And but it's like I don't it just like eases you into the day and it makes it feel a little more like special and like romanticized waking up like when you open the shades and everything. You feel like you're making your coffee. It's a little more of an event.

Yeah. And when you I'm telling you, get an old timey blue radio looking Bluetooth speaker

and then you're really in it and that [ __ ] will change your life cuz you put it in the kitchen.

Yeah. Yeah. So when you turn it on, it feels like it's coming out of an old timey radio and you just feel like you're transported.

It feels like the 50s, but like you can have a credit card. And also, if you're meal planning or you're like cooking dinner, you're getting lunches ready for the kids, put on some slow oldtimey jazz. And I'm telling you, it'll romanticize the moment.

And I even pour like whatever I'm drinking into like a pretty glass. Yes, me too.

Because that especially when I'm cooking dinner, use the pretty glasses. Use the pretty glasses.

Yeah. One thing I'm doing this year that I've been seeing everywhere and I'll even I'll post my my playlist that I made for slow time because I was very serious about the ones that I picked cuz I didn't want any like outliers here. I wanted

strictly slow oldtimey Gatsbyes jazz. Is that what did you name the playlist? I think I literally time you got to let me get I'm gonna see what I named it because I'll I'll I'll uh put it up on my Instagram for anybody who feels like they

Alena's Rex. It's called Morning Soft Gatsby Jazz. Oh, [ __ ] Love it. A little uh It hits a little harder.

It does. It does. And it it's only got a few songs on it, but that's enough cuz it's just for little things that you're doing.

It's just for the morning. Yeah. Use the fancy glass. Wear the fancy thing. Yeah, because you might, you know what? If you're dead tomorrow and you didn't wear the fancy thing tomorrow,

don't save [ __ ] What are you saving it for? Don't save it. Every day is a [ __ ] event. All right. We live in a hellscape. Let's just Every day is a goddamn event that you get, you get excited for. So, let's make everything romantic and a big deal

and hot. It really does change things when you romanticizing little moments. Yeah,

if you can bring yourself to slowly do it, I promise you it'll make a difference.

Yeah, it does. And you don't have to do anything crazy. Just little little things.

Do you know what I've been doing? I'm a nighttime shower girly most of the time. Sometime Well, sometimes I do the morning, but lately I've just been doing it at night

and I turn off all the lights lately and I put in my candle warmer and I play spa music.

Yeah. And that is a nice way to end you because you go from this soft jazz, soft nighttime jazz of dinner with your fancy drink and then you get into the shower and you're spaing and actually my aura ring has told me like whatever the [ __ ] you're doing, keep it up.

Really? Yeah. Because it's like my heart rate is better at night or something. [ __ ]

Like they're like did you do something before bed last night going on? Yeah. I'm like killing it.

Yeah. So see little little tips. Yep. That's how you should do your day because I think everybody needs little tips right now on how to be happy and fancy free

like ease into the new year and I'm I'm trying so I'm going to share whatever works for me.

We're out here. Um but yeah, so that's my thing. Cool. Um but you know speaking of Gatsby jazz, we're going to be in the early 1900s during this.

Perfect. Um from Gatsby jazz to an epidemic. Great. Uh, so we This is an interesting one. It's This is a little different. Okay. It's not true crime, but it's interesting history and like bizarre history and it's got a mystery with it. Oo, I love history.

History and mystery. You know, listen to you over there romanticizing your topics.

That's right. Um this I think this one's really this one fascinated me cuz this particular illness we're um it was once called the sleeping sickness.

Uh it has a lot of wild symptoms that come along with it. Um like I'll mention at some point one of it is like just to really like lead you in here. Um one of the symptoms that would happen is like you would go catatonic and then your face would freeze in a look of horror.

Oh my god. and just freeze and you couldn't It was like the ring how they look like like your face would just be stuck that way

or like um Harry Potter in the Chamber of Secrets. Yes. Yeah. Like that was real.

Damn. Yeah. So, let's get into it. Tell me everything. Let's get into it. I think this was also called like um and we'll mention it again. It was called different things when it first came up because people didn't know what the [ __ ] this was and still don't really understand what it was or is. And at one point I think it was called like um the grandmother like the nona because it was like

that's it. She's just the grandmother because it was like a sleeping disease like it was it's so crazy.

She's been stricken with the grandmother with the grandmother. She has the nona

the nona. So let's begin in 1916 shall we? Let's do it. So there was you know a war was raging across Europe and Dr. Constantine vonamo

him. Yep. Another van. Love a van. got some vons. Do I love this bomb? He had become pretty used to treating men with a variety of maladies at his psychiatric clinic at the University of Vienna. It was a pretty normal thing at this point because there was a war raging.

Yeah. The war really ushered in a new era of technological advances in weaponry. Uh and this these weapons that were now being like advancing so far were capable of causing mass destruction and also leaving witnesses to that destruction super psychologically damaged in their wake. Like

there was just there was a whole new host of issues that people were dealing with and as a result vono and medical professionals like him really came to know and recognized the symptoms of you know delirium, shell shock, PTSD. These were all very common in soldiers that they were seeing.

Yeah. Several years into the war, Dr. Von Economo had become accustomed to seeing all manner of not just psychological illnesses, but injuries like physical injuries. Um, you know, they were coming from like the horrific effects of mustard gas, of chlorine gas, you know, disfiguring damage from artillery shells. It was really bad.

Yeah. But the cases that really interested him the most were the epidemic illnesses like typhus, chalera, influenza because there weren't just physical dangers of battle or psychological dangers. The conditions on the actual battlefield like the cold, the wet, the dirty,

the wet, you know, and the conditions of the soldiers themselves being malnourished, highly stressed, mostly injured, dealing with all this [ __ ] It was ideal for contracting and spreading a lot of infectious diseases.

Makes sense. Uh though these illnesses weren't as obvious, they were definitely not less devastating among the soldiers and they spread like wildfire.

Well, because they're in such close quarters. Oh yeah. And they're just on Yeah. They're on top of each other and they're all just being like switched out all the time. Yeah.

And the entire wings of hospitals would be dedicated to their treatment at times. Now, we're talking today about a disease that's called encphilitis lethargica.

Okay? Uh it's kind of unknown where it first appeared. The epidemic of the early 20th century is thought to have started in 1915 Romania, but more recent studies of this disease have thought that like maybe something called the English sweats it was referred to. Okay.

Uh might have been similar to this and maybe that was the first thought of it like sight of it or whatever. But it's really hard to pinpoint because as we'll come to see during this,

this has so many varying symptoms and they're so weird. Like they're strange symptoms

and they never It like doesn't hit two people the same way. Okay. It's very strange.

Kind of sounds like co. It is. It's really scary. Now, the first documented cases of the disease appeared in 1916 at Vonomo's clinic in Vienna and at the Paris clinic of Dr. Renee Crus. At Crusete's clinic, men started arriving from the front lines with just a variety of symptoms that

they were easily identifiable, but they didn't really comprise together like a single diagnosis.

Okay. Uh by themselves, you could be like, okay, that's that, that's that. But altogether, it was like, what the [ __ ] is this?

According to author Molly Caldwell Crosby, quote, some had fever, others did not. Most complained of headache and nausea. Strangest of all was how much these soldiers slept. Now it makes sense that a person who gets, you know, the flu or a flu-l like thing as these guys were would probably, you know, want to and need to sleep for longer periods than someone who's healthy.

But there was something like very unnerving about these particular patients. Not just the amount of time that they were sleeping, but also the way that they looked.

Okay. Uh Crosby said it would have seemed almost serene at first. their blank expressionless faces free of terror and pain. But over time, they would fall asleep and stay that way for days or sometimes weeks.

What the [ __ ] And then sometimes they would never wake up. Oh, yeah. Now, in Vienna, Dr. Vono was seeing like a similar strange combination of symptoms in his own patients that were coming from the front lines, like soldiers. In January 1917, a man arrived at the clinic complaining of exhaustion, confusion, and headaches. And he sat in front of the doctor and he said that he was like, as he sat in front of him, he was struggling not just to stay upright, but just to stay awake. He like couldn't even stay awake to sit and talk to him.

Wow. He slumped in his chair. His head was like loling around from side to side. And he numerous times completely nodded off while he was talking to the doctor. And he said every time the man fell asleep, Vonamo could rouse him, but never to full consciousness. He said he was more like someone who had been woken from a deep sleep and is only vaguely aware that they're no longer sleeping.

Oh, that's weird. And by that point, Vonicano had seen this type of exhaustion in, you know, a small number of patients who again had come from the front lines of war.

But this person was a civilian. Oh. So now he's like, now we're spreading. Yeah. So the early cases documented by Vonamo and Cru were baffling both of them. This illness was seemed to have like similarities to influenza which was very rampant at the time but it lacked a lot of the defining characteristics of flu and more strange was the fact that among the small number of people who did present with encphilitis lethargica there was again just the widest variety of symptoms. The best Von Economo could tell was that they appeared to be suffering from encphilitis, which is swelling of the brain tissue,

but there was no explanation for that swelling. Like there was no evidence of head trauma, no other injury that could really account for it.

And also, while some of the symptoms matched a typical case of encphilitis, which is like fever, headaches, confusion,

there were others that were not associated with encphilitis at all. Weird. Yeah. So, as the weeks go by, Von Economos started noticing new symptoms in his patients, including one epidemic of hiccuping that resulted in one death.

Wait, they heard that correct? An epidemic of hiccuping where one person died. What the [ __ ]

Yeah. Of They died of hiccuping. Yeah. Which sounds like the worst kind of death imaginable.

Yeah. Yeah. Think of how awful it is when you start getting the hiccups and you're like hiccup and you're like, "Fuck, get it gone." Like I'm like, "Give me honey. Someone scare me. I'm holding my breath. Holy shit."

Like that's awful. Yeah, I know. It's It's the worst. Well, and then other patients started exhibiting even stranger symptoms like compulsive verbal ticks, uncontrollable blinking, involuntary muscle twitching, uncontrolled salivation,

and a small number of people who quote froze still in a catatonic state. It was like the disease was developing new symptoms as it progressed. Yeah.

But with no explanation whatsoever. And while these patients had a lot of symptoms in common, the only symptom shared by all of them was hyperomnia.

Okay. So other than that, it was like they all had hyperomnia. The rest of them

skew, but then they had a ton of [ __ ] that was just outside. Now in time, Vonamo and Crus had not compared notes at this point because they're two different places. They recognized a pattern in the clinical presentation of encphilitis lethargica. Like the more common form of you know encphilitis, the disease affected patients in two phases. It was acute and a chronic phase. The acute phase you know that had dramatic symptoms like excessive sleep, uh eye twitching, movement disorders. Those common symptoms though were often accompanied by less common symptoms. And these less common symptoms almost felt like they like came and went dayto day. Like they kind of appeared one day and went the other. And yeah, for obvious reasons, the chronic phase of the disease took a lot longer to identify and could present months or even years later. And they would sometimes u present in the form of parkinsonian like signs.

Oh yeah. So at their respective clinics, both doctors are just like diving and pouring into medical literature just trying to find anything that could figure out because they're also having trouble treating these people too,

right? Uh just finding anything that resembled what they were seeing in, you know, first in soldiers returning from the front lines and then in civilians. But Von Economo recalled hearing stories of a similar plague that had affected parts of Italy in the late 19th century. According to the stories, apparently peasants in a small village in rural Italy started falling into comaike sleep and a lot of them never woke up and those who did wake up were not the same as they were from before.

Oh. Um these these people called the disease Lona, the grandmother. Lona. Lona.

But I I don't think I'll ever be over a disease being called the grand the grandmother.

That sounds like a horror movie. The grandmother. The grandma. But in the surrounding towns and villages, those who had symptoms were referred to as the living dead.

Oh, spooky. According to Crosby, this was the first time that doctors had considered whether the strange sleeping sickness could be related to the outbreak of influenza that was occurring at the time.

Okay. Now based on those theories, Von Economos started developing his own theory that these strange symptoms he was seeing in his encphilitis lethargica patients could maybe be a reaction to exposure to influenza.

Right. Uh in April 1917, he gathered all his notes and observation and published a manuscript appropriately titled Encphilitis Lethargica. Coincidentally, just a and this is total coincidence. Just a few days later, Renee Crus published his own paper on the case in Paris. Yeah. Like they were both like on the case.

Yeah. These two manuscripts were f the first to formally identify the disease. But in the decade or so after that, roughly 9,000 papers on the subject would be published in various places, all theorizing what could be the cause, but absolutely no one being able to figure out the cure, the treatment, or really nailing down the cause.

Okay. Yeah. Despite the horrific toll that this is taking on the patient's encphilitis lethargica is taking on a patient's brain and body, it would eventually lead to some pretty groundbreaking discoveries about the function of the brain in general. Cuz remember, we're in the early 1900s.

Um, so though he couldn't examine the brains of his patients directly, at least not while they're alive.

Yeah. Vonimo theorized that patients with encphilitis lethargica had been infected with some kind of virus that only affected one part of the brain.

Okay. As a result, he would eventually establish that the affected region, the hypothalamus, was responsible because we didn't know what the parts of the brain were responsible for at this point. But he was able to like go backwards and figure out that the hypothalamus is responsible for among other things regulating sleep, body temperature, thirst, and hunger and so on. So boom, that's groundbreaking.

Yeah, that's big. While this is now considered pretty basic information in neurology at least.

Yeah, it was a really remarkable discovery in this day. And more importantly, at least for Vonicamo and the other doctors studying this disease, it narrowed down the affected area and helped them to rule out other illnesses and potential causes of mystery illnesses. The problem though is that by the end of the decade, encphilitis lethargica was no longer just affecting soldiers returning from war. But even more alarming was the fact that cases were popping up outside of Paris in Vienna. Now the disease was spreading faster than they expected and they had no way of stopping it or even slowing it down because they didn't know what the [ __ ] it was.

Right. So what do you like what precautions do you even put into place? So as the war raged across Europe, the Middle East, and Northern Africa, troops continued being moved in and out of those regions by the thousands. As men men were injured or killed, they would be removed from battle and replaced with healthy soldiers, and the war would continue. Now, in the context of a battle, that's obviously a necessity, but it never occurred to anyone in charge that by moving so many people in and out of these places, they were creating the perfect environment for this virus to spread.

Yeah. Now, just as the first patients showed up at the Vonamo and Crochet clinics after being taken off the front lines, other soldiers were cycled off the battlefield and sent to hospitals and clinics in their respective home countries. When the war ended in in November 1918, the vast majority who survived were shipped home, bringing with them the germs that they picked up while serving.

Oh, man. And it was probably just like popping off all over those ships. Now between 1917 and 1930 nearly 1 million people contracted encphilitis lethargica and of those roughly half died as a result of their symptoms.

Jesus. Now those numbers are small relative to other pandemics and epidemics. Um but for a remarkably bizarre and mysterious illness, it's pretty surprising that in sephilitis lethargica, the epidemic has never really had like a big it's like a footnote. Yeah.

In medical history. Like it's crazy. Well, and at the same time, it was probably hard to diagnose, too. So, who's to who really knows how many people did die of that? We just didn't know

exactly. Now, one reason for that status is the fact that among the germs passed around the world following the end of World War I was the Spanish flu.

Yeah. A virus that raged for more than two years and killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide. As Molly Caldwell Crosby Crosby said, "In Europe and elsewhere, few people worried about the littleknown epidemic of sleep. They were preoccupied with the rapidly spreading, extremely virulent influenza breaking out among troops in Europe and the United States, which makes sense."

Yeah, it does. Now, by 1918, encphilitis lethargica had made its way to England, where it proved just as perplexing and unable to be defined as it had been when it first appeared in France and Italy. Among the first cases reported came from physician Dr. AJ Hall, who by that time had already heard of this disease. And what struck Hall as unusual was that his patient, who was a young boy, did not seem really exhausted or even sleepy, but he was experiencing a level of muscle weakness that left him unable to lift an arm or leg off the bed.

Damn. Yeah, that's intense. So, his body was tired. Yeah. This was similar to the first civilian to visit Vonamo's clinic who was unable to hold himself up in the chair and keep his head up for any ex like period of time.

Yeah. Now soon other cases of encphilitis lethargica started showing up at Hall's clinic and they arrived with symptoms of the flu which was rampant at the time but then a short time later the symptoms would progress and that's when we'd see all the strange encphilitis lethargic symptoms. all suffered from profound lethargy and hyperomnia which appeared to affect most patients more severely during the day.

Um, interesting. Crosby wrote, "It was as if their sleep cycle was turned around. They stayed in the sleepy stuper all day and became delirious at night."

Oh. And by that time, one or more common symptoms seemed in patients in the UK was a tendency to mumble or ramble incoherently like they were talking in their sleep.

Ew, that's so spooky. It's the spookiest illness. I don't like that. As the numbers of infected were growing, more unnerving symptoms started coming out, too. Patients would fall asleep with their eyes wide open.

No. Shut the [ __ ] up. Wide open. Unmoving, staring blankly into the distance.

No. Others got facial hypertonia, a type of muscle rigidity that left their faces twisted and fixed in a masklike expression of horror.

Ew. Yeah. There were other extreme though much less common symptoms semen patients as more cases kept popping up and in Hall's clinic many patients who would be in a stuper like state during the day would come out of that state in the evening and be in a state of euphoria causing them to talk incessantly or wise around in their beds.

What the [ __ ] Like what makes you think of Nancy at the end of the craft? Yes, that's immediately what I thought of.

They gave me the gift. And in one case, a young boy was described as quote leaping from all fours into the air like the mechanical toys sold on the London streets called jumping beetles.

What? Yeah. He said, "I feel better." Yep. They would just jump at night. You jump around on all fours.

That's literally you when you feel like a millisecond better and the doctors are like, "No, you still are safe. Lay down.

Get it together." It's true. Now, for some, the exhaustion rendered them unaware of their more physical symptoms because they were so tired they couldn't really experience any of the other stuff.

Well, they just like weren't with it. Yeah. For others, like the boy leaping from all fours, the symptoms were terrifying to say the very least.

Yeah. Uh worse than the presentation of the symptoms was the fact that doctors who encountered the disease in their patients couldn't do really [ __ ] for them.

Yeah. Well, because they just don't know what to treat. Yeah. By the end of 1918, the first year the disease appeared in England, there were more than 500 cases. And in the months that followed, the number doubled. In January 1919, towns and cities across England started posting notices in the papers, informing residents that one or more cases had been documented in their area and urging anyone with symptoms to report their case.

They said, "Lay, motherfuckers." Uh, one notice said, "In view of the serious nature of the disease and the difficulties attending their treatment and presentation, it is highly important that notice be sent to the medical officer of health in every case without delay." Now, in the early months of 1919, as British physicians were just grappling with this mysterious illness, cases of this illness began appearing in the United States. In New York, several cases appeared in large clusters and among groups with social connections,

giving doctors the first clue that whatever was causing this, it appeared to be spread through close contact.

Yeah. In response, they began investigating the commonalities among the affected individuals, including their living conditions, shared food, water sources, and any kinship relations between those showing symptoms. Now, among the first patients documented in that phase was a 16-year-old girl identified as Ruth. That winter, she was brought to the Manhattan clinic of Dr. Frederick Tney, one of the city's most well-known neurologists. When Tney was first informed of this new patient, all he was told was that she had fallen asleep and wouldn't wake up.

Jesus. By that time, Tney had already read the medical literature coming from the doctors in Europe and believed he had already seen a few mild cases of sleeping sickness. So when Ruth's parents described her symptoms, he was like, "She got encphilitis lethargica."

He says, "She has the grandma." The grandma, the nona, the nona. According to Ruth's parents, she had returned home from work one afternoon about a week after Christmas, and began complaining, and this is the strangest beginning to this. She started complaining of a sharp pain in one of her fingers. Random

that had come on suddenly. What? Within hours, the pain had spread up her arm and into her shoulder, causing numbness that would eventually lead to paralysis.

Ew. By the next day, Ruth had become irrationally fearful and started lashing out violently at her parents.

Oh my god. Like she would nash her teeth and and like thrash wildly. The [ __ ]

She's 16. Yeah. To the point that she had to be sedated and restrained. She was like a wild animal, they said.

Thank god. A short time later, she fell asleep and could not be roused. By the time Dr. Tney was called, she had been asleep for 2 months.

Why did it take so long to call Dr. Tney? Cuz I guess she was at a different hospital. She was She had a feeding tube and an IV drip to keep her nourished.

Two months. Two months sleeping. Damn. Well, back to that finger thing. It's actually like that's crazy. That's how I That's how my COVID started. The first I've only had it once.

Your finger hurt? No, it's similar though. My elbow was like, and it's like joint pain, but my elbow was so sore. And I remember saying to Drew, I was like, "Oh my god, my elbow is so sore right now."

That's so bizarre. And then the rest of my body started hurting. And I was like, "Do I have CO?"

But it started in my elbow. Wow. Isn't that weird? But weird. When I looked it up, I it was like, yeah, like joint pain. Like it makes sense. But it was one specific elbow hurts.

Yeah. It was weird. And Ruth was like, "My finger hurts." Yeah. I mean, the finger is like even stranger.

That's crazy. Yeah. So, among the things that puzzled Tney the most was the fact that although she appeared to be asleep, this is even weirder.

She was able to respond to simple commands. Well, that's like when we were talking about um comas recently, like how we how we don't have a lot of understanding about that,

but she was like someone in a trance. He said like her eyes and mouth were closed, but she was able to respond to simple prompts from the doctor. When Tney asked Ruth to shift her body from one side of the bed to the other, she did it.

So she could still hear with difficulty, but she did it. Okay. By that time, she had developed the additional symptom of hypertonia, which caused the muscles in her arms and legs to become rigid and stuck in what was surely uncomfortable positions for hours.

I was going to say that must be so painful and just stuck. Yeah. According to Crosby, when Tney move tried to move her from the bed, she began to tremble. It started with a hand or arm and then spread until her entire body was convulsing in a rabbit-like twitch.

Oh my god. Like so many other doctors around the world, Tney had come to recognize the symptoms of encphilitis lethargia. The nona

the grandma but was at a loss for how to treat it. That's the worst part of this.

Oh, you do. In the end, his recommendations were just basically ways to make Ruth more physically comfortable.

Yeah, that makes sense. But he was forced to tell her parents that as of that time there was no treatment or cure and that their doctor was their daughter was likely to stay in that state

forever. In fact, a few days later, Ruth's temperature spiked to 107° and she died.

Oh my god, that's awful. What a horrific. After months of living that way, you Yeah, that's so sad.

So, as cases began spreading in the US, so did anxiety and fear now about this disease. The Spanish flu epidemic had affected millions of people around the US and the world, killing massive numbers of people. But influenza was something people could at least understand

like they could they could recognize influenza. You know what the flu is, you know?

Uh and also the most devastating effects of the flu affected certain populations which made it less intimidating to the general public,

right? And sephilitis lethargica on the other hand was something [ __ ] terrifying.

Yeah. It seemed like anybody could get it and totally weird and bizarre and scary and horrific.

Yeah. Not only were the symptoms varied across patients, but they were psychologically disturbing, physically disabling, and seemingly impossible to treat. And even if one did manage to survive the acute phase of illness, the chronic phase brought with it Parkinson's-like symptoms that would be profoundly lifealtering at that point.

Yeah. Which is so scary. People lived with this forever. Wow. While new cases started popping up around the US with a lot of frequency now, the American public looked to doctors and healthare workers to explain this scary disease that has seemed to come out of [ __ ] nowhere. Yeah.

But by that point, the predominant theory was that encphilitis lethargica was somehow related to the flu epidemic that had recently gone crazy.

Like almost like a mutated Yeah. Like just like a pop off of it. You know what I mean?

A pop off, you know, quick pop off. It's like a popup version of the flu. Yeah.

Since so many of the symptoms, particularly the early ones, were seen in cases of the flu, like you would come in with flu-l like symptoms,

right? And encphilitis was caused by an infection, it seemed reasonable to presume that the sleeping sickness was an after effect of the Spanish flu. Similarly, just a few years earlier, an epidemic of malaria had spread across the African continent, sharing several of the more prominent symptoms seen in patients with encphilitis lethargica.

As a result, some doctors theorized that the newly emerged disease could be related.

I mean, yeah, I could see why they would think that. Yeah. By early spring, administrators in cities across the US were forced to address this growing fear. They had to talk to the public. They couldn't just let them be like,

well, because it's like, what do you do? like what precautions do you take? But the worst part is they have no information. Like they have like very little information. There's this episode of Spongebob where he just like is not going to go outside and he sings this song where he's like indoors. Indoors.

That's basically what they were doing. That would be me. They're just doortodoor. Stay inside.

Indoors. Now in San Francisco, the city's health department released a statement in early March 1919 saying San Francisco need have no fear of the sleeping sickness.

Don't you lie to me like that. As an aftermath of the influenza, it is well established that the sleeping sickness is carried by the titifly and occasionally by other insects found in Africa and the South. It has no direct connection with the influenza, which is entirely different origin.

That's a bitchade statement. That's a very [ __ ] made statement. And it would turn out that San Francisco health officials were wrong on literally every point that they put in that.

Also, what's a titly? It's like it's like a little uh I think it's almost like a mosquito kind of thing.

Tit fly. Um just 4 days later, physicians in the city started reporting their first cases of encphilitis lethargica. So, they were San Francisco Health were like, "It's nope, don't worry. No titsy flies here. Get out of here." Nope. And then 4 days later they were like, "So my bad."

Does that sound familiar to anyone? No, it sounds totally foreign. I couldn't imagine.

Almost like we were told the same thing. It's almost like that. Um, in one case, a local railroad worker, Chester Jones, came down with symptoms and slept for 10 days straight.

Not Chester, just Chester. I would honestly he probably like loved that 10 days of sleep if that was it because a railroad worker is that's

that's a hard job. Yeah. During that period, Jones's doctor, WB Coffee, was able to rouse him long enough to eat a small amount of food or drink water, but otherwise he was out.

Damn. And and this isn't like a coma. That's the thing. It's like they are sleeping like straight cuz they can wake their mouth and be like, "Here, have have a piece of toast." And then they're like, "All right, good night." Like back to sleep.

It's crazy. Are they like I wonder if they were like able to like get up to use the bathroom or

Yeah. Or if they had to like Yeah. Now, coffee said, "We have had both hiccups and the sleeping sickness among the various other effects of the influence, not the hiccups."

So, hiccups are back. This form of sleeping sickness is to be distinguished from that which is carried by the titly and is found in the tropics. So, he's like liars.

Yeah, it's not the same. You guys [ __ ] up. Meanwhile, in New York, the first deaths from sleeping sickness were reported, starting with steamship captain Frank Martin, who'd been diagnosed with encphilitis lethargica just 5 days earlier. The rising number of deaths inspired way more fear in the public, obviously, but state and local health officials were trying to minimize the danger of it.

Um, the New York health commissioner told reporters, "The symptoms of the disease are much the same as those of spring fever."

Disagree. Lying sacks of [ __ ] Like are you okay? I'm sorry. Like that's insane to do.

You just trying to piss him. And I love this. But just because a man feels languid, he need not jump to the conclusion he has contracted sleeping sickness.

I would jump to that conclusion. If I felt languid, I feel like I have a sleeping sickness. Okay. Being languid feels

feel sleepy. A little more intense than feeling just a little sleepy. Yeah. The [ __ ]

Now, the willingness to disregard the dangers of encphilitis lethargic is not limited to the US and Montreal. So, Canada, you are not immune to this.

You were usually on the right side. Usually, we usually We're rooting for you. We're all rooting for you.

We're rooting for you. I've never in my life yelled at a girl like this. That's right. So, but in Montreal, healthcare workers simply took they took a very dismissive approach to it.

Canada, obviously, it was in an effort to quell public fear, but they don't need like mass pandemonium.

They didn't know enough about like how to properly inform without inciting kind of thing.

They didn't know a lot about truthtelling back then. It happens. One hospital worker told a reporter, "This reluctance to diagnose encphilitis lethargica does not discredit the Montreal physicians in any way. To determine absolutely that a patient was suffering from a new disease is extremely difficult. And in every case so far, there there has been an element of doubt.

Well, that's fair. So, they're being they're being much more like um I would say like you know

diplomatic about it. You know, they're just they're being like maybe it's not cuz we don't want to. It's because it's hard to diagnose a new disease,

which does. Yeah, I get that. And you don't want to say something as that and then be completely wrong. Yeah.

By 1921, doctors had still not discovered a solution for this or what it was, but they were managing to at least make some headway in like starting to understand it better. Not only were they continuing to narrow down the areas of the brain affected by encphilitis lethargica, but they were also starting to recognize earlier cases that had been diagnosed as something else. Okay?

Because they didn't understand this disease before. In Los Angeles, for example, one doctor described having been referred a patient from quote the leading alienist in Los Angeles.

I love when when they were called alienists. Um after the young woman had been diagnosed with catatonia.

Okay. He said, "I was called in after three of the physicians along with their mental specialists had tried every blood test and every means of diagnosing the condition for a week. In retrospect, the doctor recalled the woman had influenza not long before the new symptoms came.

Okay, which further supported the suspected link between the two. Right now, over the course of the 1920s, physicians and specialists kept trying to nail this [ __ ] down. And in 1923, for example, a study out of Europe found that out of a thousand encphilitis lethargica patients evaluated, only four had a history of influenza within the previous 6 months, of which two were doubtful.

So that's not it. Yeah. So similarly, in a much larger study conducted at Camp Dixs in New Jersey, 6,000 cases of influenza were studied and no concurrent cases of encphilitis lethargica were identified.

Wow. So, it seemed to kind of bash that link in the head. Definitely. Further complicating matters was the fact that not all patients experienced the same symptoms, nor were they affected in the same ways and for the same length of time. There's like no consistency.

For instance, a middle-aged man in New York might fall into a coma and die from a fever a week later, which literally happened, while a teenage girl in London would experience delirium and hyperomnia that lasted for a month, then went away miraculously. And there was hardly ever a clue why,

what started it, right? In 1936, Joseph Langan Jr., a 30-year-old Illinois man, woke from an encphilitis lethargic coma after 440 days.

Oh my god. Shocking everyone, right? Just a year of your life gone. Over a year of your life gone.

Just woke up 440 days. He said, "All right, let's do this." Yeah. He said, "Cool. I feel rested, so let's go."

I wonder if he had any after effects. Yeah, that that's the thing. A lot of them did and I most of the people around him thought he would succumb to what they were calling the sleep of death at this point.

Yeah. Now, perhaps one of the most baffling things about encphilitis lethargic epidemic was that after more than a decade of crazy bizarre symptoms and a lot of tragic outcomes, the disease just seemed to disappear. which is so strange because it's like there weren't a lot of precautions put into place because they didn't know what precautions. So like where did it go?

According to Dr. RR Dormashkin, by 1927, the acute cases occurring in England were often so mild that the acute phase would pass without much notice. But the long-term effects could often be quite devastating, leaving a lot of individuals in comas for the rest of their lives.

Oh, that's awful. While new cases of encphilitis lethargica began slowing as early as the later 1920s and they were considered exceptionally rare by the 1930s, those who neither died nor recovered from the illness were left in like a vegetative state for the rest of their they just didn't really come out of it. Even if they came out of the coma, they would be like forever changed.

Yeah. I mean, of course. And those who did survive were left with what neurologist Oliver Saxs described as extraordinary crises. That could include the quote simultaneous virtually instantaneous onset of Parkinsonism, catatonia, ticks, obsessions, and 30 or 40 other problems sometimes.

Oh my god. Yeah. It's like so that it literally robs your life. But it's like it really Yeah. Like do you

In the aftermath of this epidemic, most doctors were content to accept the theory that it was related to influenza or just allow the disease to be a mystery. They were like whatever. We don't know whose moving hope it doesn't happen again.

Decades after the epidemic had ended, Sax's focus was on treating those locked in the comas still by this disease in the first place.

Beginning in the 19 the late 1960s, Sax started working with encphilitis lethargic coma or catatonic patients at Beth Abraham Hospital in the Bronx. In his experiments with the amino acid L-dopa, Sax found that many of the patients suffering with the severe Parkinson's-like symptoms of encphilitis lethargica, including muscle rigidity, spasms, and tremors, could find relief, like incredible relief with this.

Although the success of L-dopa proved limited and temporary at the time, ongoing research in the years since has resulted into continuing success with treating people who have dealt with these long-term symptoms.

Okay. In 2002, the last known survivor of the encphilitis lethargic epidemic, Philip Leather, died in London at the age of 82.

Wow. He was once a child prodigy. He had incredible promise. And he contracted the illness in 1931 while he was still a child. And he spent seven decades in what the press described as a quote translike state. Seven decades. 70 years. He said, they said he just slowly went into himself over a period of a few years. That's what his sister said.

Now, after his death, his brain was donated to the Royal London Hospital where a lot of specialists were hoping it was going to just completely unlock all the secrets of the disease. But unfortunately, it didn't really shed any light.

Nothing. Which is like wild that there was no like hallmark thing that you could point to to say this is what happened. As of today, cases occasionally pop up from time to time.

[ __ ] up. Don't even tell me that. But they're super rare. Like exceedingly rare.

They better be. As for the cause of this sleeping sickness, they still don't know. To this day, 2026, we still have no [ __ ] clue.

What the [ __ ] How? It's no longer widely believed to be related to influenza. Um

Well, just with those studies alone. Yeah. It just doesn't seem to connect anymore. And some neurologists believe it may be like an autoimmune response to a virus, while others think that there could be environmental or infectious or viral explanations for it. But others believe that it could be there could be like multiple causes for the illness. I wonder if it was like be like I wonder if the reason it's so rare now is like it was like some kind of illness obviously, but it was maybe exacerbated by something that we don't intake anymore.

Like we don't do anymore. You know what I mean? Yeah. That's what I wonder. I wonder if

environmentally there's something that we've shed out of our system or shed out of our way of life that

we're no longer being exposed to. Yeah. I think that would be an interesting thing to go back and look through.

Yeah. Try to like work backwards that way, right? cuz it's just but it's like what would it be that would and that would affect so many people from so many like like various age ranges

and give them so many different kinds of symptoms. Yeah. Like the difference in symptoms is wild

and it just makes me think of like the Radium Girls case like how they were like painting their mouths with radium and then all that crazy [ __ ] happened.

That case will blow my mind for the rest of my life. No, truly it really will. But yeah,

but you wonder if it's something like that. If it's like this used to be in like our milk or this used to be in

a cleaning product, the air or you know these people take for a cold. Yeah. Or like these people live near these plants that produced this. Like

I wonder like clothing. Yeah. Hair stuff. It could be anything. Yeah. Something soap.

But it would have to be so vastly used because so many like kids were getting this and like elderly people were getting there. No like age range either. It's like everybody.

It's interesting. So, I feel like it has to be like a like a something you would use on your body.

Yeah. You know, that would be you would use on a kid and Yeah. Or like or like you said like a cleaning product like

that somebody might have used in their house. Yeah. I feel like we should really continue looking into this though so that this doesn't happen again.

Let's figure this out, guys. Let's do it. Let's figure it out. We can do this. Weird things have happened where like the Summerton Man case was like solved right after we covered it.

So, maybe they'll figure it out because they put it into the world. That'd be weird. I'm putting it into the world right now. We're going to figure it out.

I would love that. That'd be sick. That would be a big [ __ ] claim. That would be

And like I'm never claiming to solve anything, but I'm just saying it's weird timing

cuz there's there's a small contingent of people who get so [ __ ] angry when we when we will claim that.

Stay mad. Which makes me want to claim more. I'm I'm claiming it. But but like I'll claim this one.

I would totally claim this one. I'll claim it. Imagine if we were right too if they were like, "Oh my god,

it was in a cleaning product based on the mor. It was in Clorox. Decades and decades. We never thought of this. Clorox is like, "Don't." It wasn't me.

No. Clorox didn't do it. Clorox is like, "Fuck y'all." No, it wasn't Clorox. No, it was not Clark. I use to disinfect my entire [ __ ] home.

Clark, we love you. Come on. Clorox, come on the pod. You're invited. Oh, man. That's a crazy ass case.

Isn't that crazy? Like, this was just like is it's every once in a while we like to throw a weird [ __ ] history thing in there, like some weird illness or something just to like shake it up a little. falls under the morbid umbrella. Anything that's morbid and bizarre.

Yeah. Every once in a while we got to throw a curveball. And this one just like really fascinating.

Dave was fascinated by this. I was fascinated by this. Well, cuz it's just so crazy that we've never figured it out.

That's the thing. Like we figured out a lot. And then it was like concurrently running when like the Spanish flu was happening. So it got kind of buried under those. What if it was like man-made by like some chemist maybe

and like got out? Who knows? Who knows? Who knows? Not me. Not me. But yeah, if you guys ever want us to cover something that like you like something similar to this that like you feel falls under the morbid umbrella, send it in to morbidpodcast@gmail.com with like unconventional morbid idea.

Yeah. Cuz you know, we don't do these often like we try, you know, we mostly do true crime before, but every once in a while it's fun to like give you guys a little like, huh, that was weird and interesting kind of We could always throw it like you know we have that bonus episode to play with so we could always throw it over there if it's not everybody's thing but

so if you got weird bizarre history things science things medical things that you you would just really love to hear a discussion about in a deep dive in throw it our way we'd love to do stuff morbid finds

yeah the more the marrier all right let's find a weird fact to finish this off I think it's your turn

the word pothole it's a redundant term because pot comes from the middle English word pit meaning hole hole. So that a pothole is a hole hole.

A hole hole. A hole hole. I'm only going to be calling them ho ho for now on. God damn they fill in that hole hole.

God damn. In Massachusetts is full of hole holes. So hole holes everywhere. Whole holes in your hair.

All kinds of holes. I like that. That is a fun fact. Really sexy. And with that, we hope you keep listening

and we hope you keep it weird. But not so weird that you don't keep it real sexy in here. And drive slow over holes and cover your mouth when you avoid them.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Episode 746: The Sleeping Sickness Epidemic (1919-1930)"?

Ash (Host), Elena (Host).

What is "Episode 746: The Sleeping Sickness Epidemic (1919-1930)" about?

The discussion centers around the impact and history of the sleeping sickness epidemic that occurred from 1919 to 1930, exploring its causes, effects on society, and lasting implications. The hosts also share personal anecdotes and reflections, creating a balance between serious historical topics and lighthearted banter.

What is mentioned in this Morbid | Podcast episode?

25 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Encphilitis Lethargica, Dr. Constantine von Economo, World War I, Spanish Flu, Dr. Renee Crus, Molly Caldwell Crosby. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Episode 746: The Sleeping Sickness Epidemic (1919-1930)"?

The episode runs 52 min; the transcript is about 9,902 words in 274 timestamped sections.

More from Morbid | Podcast

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.