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dhampyresaThe podcast I currently listen to to unstress is This Podcast Will Kill You, a podcast about infectious diseases. This works very well for me because: (a) science is cool, (b) I love learning things and (c) most of the episodes have a happy ending, because humanity murdered one of the horseriders of the Apocalypse now we have VACCINES and ANTIBIOTICS.
I was not expecting Episode 30: Encephalitis Lethargica to freak me the fuck out.
From the mid-1910s to the 1920s, five million people basically fell asleep to never wake up. (Yes, if you've read Sandman that's where that comes from.) Roughly a third of them died, while many others were never the same again. The disease does not always present in exactly the same way, but a zombie-like state was also very common.
One of the other, fortunately uncommon, symptom was psychosis. Several affected people, in the early stages, were reported as doing things they had seemingly no control over, including, in one case, plucking her own eyes out.
And then people just... stopped getting it. People who had it, still had it, but no one new was getting it (there's been maybe a new case per decade since, if that).
In the 1960s, those patients who had not died were still catatonic and/or asleep. And essentially forgotten, left to rot in the same institutions that had housed them since the start, now with much smaller budgets. And the a psychiatrist realised that a then-new drug, used to treat Parkinson's might be able to help these people.
And it was!
Which led to the horrific revelation that they had been conscious the entire goddamn fucking time.
Also the side effects of the drug were such that a lot of them were only improved for a few months, either because it stopped improving their symptoms or because it made them a danger to themselves and others.
We: Do not have a cure. We also: Do not know what caused it.
It may or may not be linked to the 1918 flu pandemic.
And I thought the existential horror of the Dancing Plague was bad.
I was not expecting Episode 30: Encephalitis Lethargica to freak me the fuck out.
From the mid-1910s to the 1920s, five million people basically fell asleep to never wake up. (Yes, if you've read Sandman that's where that comes from.) Roughly a third of them died, while many others were never the same again. The disease does not always present in exactly the same way, but a zombie-like state was also very common.
One of the other, fortunately uncommon, symptom was psychosis. Several affected people, in the early stages, were reported as doing things they had seemingly no control over, including, in one case, plucking her own eyes out.
And then people just... stopped getting it. People who had it, still had it, but no one new was getting it (there's been maybe a new case per decade since, if that).
In the 1960s, those patients who had not died were still catatonic and/or asleep. And essentially forgotten, left to rot in the same institutions that had housed them since the start, now with much smaller budgets. And the a psychiatrist realised that a then-new drug, used to treat Parkinson's might be able to help these people.
And it was!
Which led to the horrific revelation that they had been conscious the entire goddamn fucking time.
Also the side effects of the drug were such that a lot of them were only improved for a few months, either because it stopped improving their symptoms or because it made them a danger to themselves and others.
We: Do not have a cure. We also: Do not know what caused it.
It may or may not be linked to the 1918 flu pandemic.
And I thought the existential horror of the Dancing Plague was bad.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-21 12:54 am (UTC)It's extremely frightening. Ralph Richardson's first wife, Kit Hewitt, died of one of the forms which involved progressive physical decline without mental impairment, which is a nightmare.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-24 12:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-21 01:00 am (UTC)I remember a movie, ages ago, it was called Awakenings with Robin Williams. It reminds me of it -- and now I've googled it and it was actually based on the memoirs of the doctor who administered the cure!
It was a very sad movie indeed.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-24 12:54 am (UTC)The podcast actually quotes from the book and mentions the movie -- I really reccomend the podcast, if this is the sort of thing you're interested in.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-21 02:41 am (UTC)Well, if I have nightmares tonight, I'll know why. D:
(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-24 01:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-24 03:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-21 12:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-24 01:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-21 10:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-24 01:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-23 07:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-24 01:34 am (UTC)The podcast goes into much more details, it's great(?).