Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic That Remains One of Medicine's Greatest Mysteries by Molly Caldwell Crosby Page A
Authors: Molly Caldwell Crosby
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Frank Costello, was the most powerful in a number of crews that bloodied New York streets.
If violence was not enough to make New York feel unsafe, the latest progress in automobile mass production would. At a time when medicine was rapidly advancing life expectancy, one observer wrote, “The one appalling increase in the number of deaths, from a cause that is among the least excusable, has been in automobile accidents.” Stepping off a curb could literally prove fatal.
Parents also worried about the children of this age. For the first time in history, children had a wealth of free time and free roam of the streets. They were not saddled with the hefty responsibility and chores of farm life. Modern food production, mass transportation, and appliances eased those burdens. Parents worried that their children were losing something valuable in the exchange. They stood by and shook their heads at a generation of children who spent their time on tops, marbles, and kick-the-can rather than learning riding, shooting, tool work, and other building blocks of self-reliance.
All of these changes, rapid and monumental, were affecting the American psyche. At the same time, the field of psychiatry was finally gaining the approval and acceptance of the medical community—in some sense because the stress of life had become so pervasive. Jelliffe was convinced that physical manifestations of these psychological worries plagued modern man. For neurologists in the 1920s, the focus was not so much on tackling every problem as it was on maintaining what they referred to as “mental hygiene.” Just as personal hygiene helped control infectious disease, mental hygiene would keep the mind clean and healthy.
S urely that thought occurred to Jelliffe as his new patient, Adam, sat before him in the fall of 1924. Like the physicians in Europe—von Economo in Vienna and Hall in England—Jelliffe wondered about food poisoning when he encountered his first encephalitis lethargica patients. Jelliffe went so far as to suspect faultily packed olives. But, like the other physicians, he soon dismissed the idea as the disease took on new symptoms. By the time epidemic encephalitis had reached its peak in New York City, Jelliffe began to see patients who were not in the throes of the disease, but had sustained damage from it.
Adam had arrived at Jelliffe’s office on West Fifty-sixth wearing a gray suit buttoned over a vest and a striped tie. A fedora was tilted on his head. Looking around the office, Adam would have seen the spines of dozens of medical journals, a desk cluttered with stacks of paper, and a patchwork of sunlight on the glass vials and jars. In front of the journals was one large bell jar and a microscope that gave the office an air of scientific research, as though peering through that great lens would shed any light on the darker confines of the mind.
The first thing Dr. Jelliffe noticed about the young man sitting before him was a well-marked and progressive type of Parkinson’s disease. For the first three weeks Jelliffe saw him, Adam walked like a dummy, his arms drawn up to his sides, hands limp before him, and he showed a distinct tremor. Jelliffe diagnosed him as having the chronic effects of epidemic encephalitis.
Adam, Jelliffe recorded, was a young Jewish man about twenty years of age. His father was Russian, his mother Hungarian. Adam was one of five children and, according to his files, had been born without difficulty, walked and talked at the usual age, read by the age of five or six. He did not wet his bed, bite his nails, stammer or stutter, walk in his sleep, or show any other compulsive habits before his case of flu during Easter break of 1922.
Since that attack, he had suffered as many as three or four respiratory attacks a day. At times, lighting a cigarette would help divert his attention and stop an attack. At other times, lighting a cigarette could trigger one. During an attack, Jelliffe noted,
If violence was not enough to make New York feel unsafe, the latest progress in automobile mass production would. At a time when medicine was rapidly advancing life expectancy, one observer wrote, “The one appalling increase in the number of deaths, from a cause that is among the least excusable, has been in automobile accidents.” Stepping off a curb could literally prove fatal.
Parents also worried about the children of this age. For the first time in history, children had a wealth of free time and free roam of the streets. They were not saddled with the hefty responsibility and chores of farm life. Modern food production, mass transportation, and appliances eased those burdens. Parents worried that their children were losing something valuable in the exchange. They stood by and shook their heads at a generation of children who spent their time on tops, marbles, and kick-the-can rather than learning riding, shooting, tool work, and other building blocks of self-reliance.
All of these changes, rapid and monumental, were affecting the American psyche. At the same time, the field of psychiatry was finally gaining the approval and acceptance of the medical community—in some sense because the stress of life had become so pervasive. Jelliffe was convinced that physical manifestations of these psychological worries plagued modern man. For neurologists in the 1920s, the focus was not so much on tackling every problem as it was on maintaining what they referred to as “mental hygiene.” Just as personal hygiene helped control infectious disease, mental hygiene would keep the mind clean and healthy.
S urely that thought occurred to Jelliffe as his new patient, Adam, sat before him in the fall of 1924. Like the physicians in Europe—von Economo in Vienna and Hall in England—Jelliffe wondered about food poisoning when he encountered his first encephalitis lethargica patients. Jelliffe went so far as to suspect faultily packed olives. But, like the other physicians, he soon dismissed the idea as the disease took on new symptoms. By the time epidemic encephalitis had reached its peak in New York City, Jelliffe began to see patients who were not in the throes of the disease, but had sustained damage from it.
Adam had arrived at Jelliffe’s office on West Fifty-sixth wearing a gray suit buttoned over a vest and a striped tie. A fedora was tilted on his head. Looking around the office, Adam would have seen the spines of dozens of medical journals, a desk cluttered with stacks of paper, and a patchwork of sunlight on the glass vials and jars. In front of the journals was one large bell jar and a microscope that gave the office an air of scientific research, as though peering through that great lens would shed any light on the darker confines of the mind.
The first thing Dr. Jelliffe noticed about the young man sitting before him was a well-marked and progressive type of Parkinson’s disease. For the first three weeks Jelliffe saw him, Adam walked like a dummy, his arms drawn up to his sides, hands limp before him, and he showed a distinct tremor. Jelliffe diagnosed him as having the chronic effects of epidemic encephalitis.
Adam, Jelliffe recorded, was a young Jewish man about twenty years of age. His father was Russian, his mother Hungarian. Adam was one of five children and, according to his files, had been born without difficulty, walked and talked at the usual age, read by the age of five or six. He did not wet his bed, bite his nails, stammer or stutter, walk in his sleep, or show any other compulsive habits before his case of flu during Easter break of 1922.
Since that attack, he had suffered as many as three or four respiratory attacks a day. At times, lighting a cigarette would help divert his attention and stop an attack. At other times, lighting a cigarette could trigger one. During an attack, Jelliffe noted,
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