Lethargica encephalitis, Economo encephalitis, also known as drowsiness, is one of the most strange diseases in the history of world medicine.

Symptoms like encephalitis for the first time in the London capital of the UK in the seventeenth century when some people suddenly fall into a state of prolonged drowsiness with symptoms similar to encephalitis, noWaking up after a few weeks, not drinking, not eating ... people tried to wake them up in many ways but in vain.

The disease was first described in 1917 by a psychiatrist and nervous doctor of Austrian Konstantin von Economo, who called it "coma" (so sometimes people also called Economo disease).

The first symptoms often appear quite suddenly, starting with headaches and feeling tired, then appearing a state of drowsiness, sometimes accompanied by delirium but the patient is easy to wake up.

The disease can lead to early death or after a few weeks;But it can last for weeks or even a few months.The scary thing is that this disease has no uniform symptoms.

One third of patients with sleep death in the acute phase, coma cannot wake up or fall into a state of insomnia so badly that it cannot make them sleep, often ending with death.Within 10 to 14 days.

Due to feeling short of breath, during sleep, patients often perform strange postures.Sometimes insomnia comes with constant excitement, making the patient crazy, both physically and mentally.

These patients are in a state of constant excitement and exercise until they die, due to exhaustion for 1 week or 10 days.

For more than two centuries later, the disease did not return until the winter of 1916-1917, when in Vienna's capital of Austria and other European cities, people suddenly showed sleep.One of the first cases recorded was on the suburbs of Verdun (France), where the disease defeated the soldiers of the Entente Treaty.

The years 1920-1921 was the most violent epidemic period.Drowsiness spread through tiny droplets in the air, which the pathogen is thought to be an unknown virus.

There is a conjecture that this disease appears related to "Spanish influenza" outbreaks in the years 1918-1919.The human body is weakened by influenza of influenza into a "prey" that is easy to attack for the new virus strain, or encephalitis becomes a post -"Spanish influenza" complication.

Drowsiness is often fatal in a coma, or vice versa, when people have chronic insomnia.A total of 1.6 million people died from this disease, accounting for 1/3 of the patients with the disease.Some people passed away, the rest of their lives became "living statues", losing their ability to move and communicate with words.

From Romania, sleepy encephalitis spread to Ukraine and Russia.The first case was recorded in Russia's Nizhegorod province in March 1921, and within the next three years, there were a total of 18 men and 13 women suffering from the disease.

The first people in Moscow suffered from this disease were in September 1922, and after 2 months, many people went to the doctor with strange symptoms.

According to the data of Professor Mikhail Margulis - Department of Neuropathy of the University of Moscow, the number of people infected in the Soviet capital in early 1923 was nearly 100 people, while the peak took place in January that year..

At Staro-Ekaterininskaya Hospital, every 4 patients diagnosed with this disease, one person does not survive.

Professor Mikhail Margulis said that encephalitis has different manifestations, but the most common is drowsiness.At that time, the patient who fell into a state of coma can last weekly or monthly with high body temperature.Even if they disturb them, they still sleep even while eating.This is because the eye muscles are paralyzed, eyelid drooping, some special cases also lead to strabismus.

Because of shortness of breath, patients often have strange sleeping positions.To avoid infection, Professor Mikhail Margulis advises people to apply preventive measures like other infectious diseases.

Due to the outbreak of epidemics, in the Soviet Union, it was established a study of drowsy encephalitis.

On the basis of clinical observations of many patients, people have published specialized books by Nikolai Chetverikov and Alexander Greenstein, as well as collections of medical materials.

According to researcher Joel Vilensky, a number of Soviet clinicians have recorded the high level of spread of drowsiness in the Jewish community, as well as the relationship of the disease with injuries and the trauma.Another disease.

However, doctors in the Soviet Union and the West do not offer effective treatments.

The Soviet doctors bet on enhancing immunity, improving the overall diet, reasonable physical activity and free medical care, including annual health checks.To protect himself from infection, Margulis recommends "the same preventive measures as for other infectious diseases".

Sleeping spread globally until 1927, 5 million people fell ill because of coma, but in all countries, the disease disappeared suddenly and mysterious as when it broke out.

Today, Economo encephalitis is called a "rare clinical disease", it has never returned to a massive scale.The last large outbreak was recorded on the territory of the former Soviet Union - in 2014, 33 residents of the AkaMola region of Kazakhstan were infected.

Over the past hundreds of years, the most advanced laboratories and leading scientists have tried to explain the phenomenon of coma and develop a treatment, but "drowsy virus" - an agent.The coma has not been isolated, the disease is still one of the biggest mysteries in history.