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July 1919

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE HISTOPATHOLOGY OF EPIDEMIC ("LETHARGIC") ENCEPHALITIS

Author Affiliations

Associate Professor of Nervous and Mental Diseases, Rush Medical College; Attending Neurologist, Cook County Hospital

From the laboratories of pathology of Cook County and Psychopathic Hospitals, Chicago.

Arch NeurPsych. 1919;2(1):24-40. doi:10.1001/archneurpsyc.1919.02180070033002
Abstract

The various symptoms of epidemic ("lethargic") encephalitis—somnolence, stupor with or without slight elevation of temperature, together with ocular and other cranial nerve paralyses, etc., may occur in many cerebral disorders. We may mention the hemorrhagic superior polioencephalitis of Wernicke, the cerebral form of poliomyelitis, the sleeping sickness caused by trypanosomiasis, syphilitic meningitis, paretic dementia, encephalitis caused by anthrax (Fulci1) or other infectious diseases, as tuberculosis, cerebrospinal meningitis and especially influenza. Here also belong cases of poisoning with carbon monoxid, sulphuric acid (Wernicke2) and meat and fish (botulism). Any of the types of encephalitis mentioned may so resemble the clinical picture and course of the epidemic ("lethargic") form that they, undoubtedly, have been and are confounded with the latter. Especially striking is the clinical similarity between lethargic encephalitis and the sleeping sickness caused in man by the Trypanosoma gambiense, hence "lethargic" encephalitis is popularly called "sleeping sickness." In

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