A Word on Words; 3914; Molly Caldwell Crosby

liz from nashville studio way celebrating offers literature ideas for more than three decades this is word on words ellen johnson intolerant welcome once again to a war on words my guest today is a bestselling author and a reading shortell as well as a journalist molly caldwell crosby first book the american plate was hail of the new york times as a first rate of medical detective drama he is here today with sleep the forgotten in the epidemic than equally terrifying medical read about the still unresolved story behind encephalitis lethargic are sleeping sickness quite a rider who's able to weave scientific knowledge into a gripping story that she does welcome molly through world wars thank you thanks for having me it's a great to have you talk about something virtually nobody on amazon account undecided as heard about or heard much about and sleeping sickness

you know somewhere along the way to catch phrase that sticks but this epidemic was real and alice's a gripping story to think of how it began makes me wonder now as the bottom of the plane how you tracked the origins of it but it's a world war one it's yes and to date the first cases they noticed were coming off the french live off of were done in the trench warfare they were on transporting the troops to the paris indiana and started noticing among these field hospitals that they were patients that would not wake up and i'm obviously unusual sentence asking go hand in hand with a number of diseases that these soldiers they just cannot keep them awake feeling for the time they were not in a coma they were just sleeping and said to doctors started preparing papers on and really literally within days they are who is in paris

is it is not for him there was an austrian pilot left the nba looked flying over to the issue rather than the war comes home as parents i please don't do you know it gets into it gets into medicine and he's the doctor and the other here's his name is konstantin by economists and this disease has also been known as fine economists and that politeness and he's the one he really first noticed this unusual set of symptoms really all seem to hinge on sleep disorders and so he's the one who named it and that white lethargic at which literally means the swelling in the brain make you sleepy miller there's a wonderful photo album solo that the picture of a camel and there is a picture of a well several locked uncertain play the role and in tracking down clues that might get some insights

we don't know what causes exactly it with that mysterious at the time it appeared and made much more so because of the world war because doctors on opposite sides could not really compare cases or discuss what's happening it was sort of a delayed response they didn't realize it was epidemic until it was she later that artist fred i'm going to paris london and then new york and by about nineteen nineteen across the globe was and nearly every country in the world by the close of the epidemic i think five million people have been affected by it so it had a large impact solis a lot grown so zone the a creature that's an all the other is as long and as you say that there's no real communication where they both well there is a soldier who's out of the streets almost constantly sometimes beyond that

identifiable blood pretty hard to breathe at it it's very vague and it was a really quick succession when they started noticing that with me soldiers coming in shortly thereafter especially andy i'm neurological clinic in vienna were about economy work they started seeing an influx of unusual patients with obsessive compulsive disorder and hysteria unusual ticks someone actually died of hiccup being a respiratory type of tech and there hadn't i disorders just all at once and one doctor would refer to it as something like shrapnel hitting the nervous system it had such a wide range of symptoms on but they all did seem to be associated with sleep comes a time when monica cells psychology convention that is going for a new disease in law wonder how his peers so it goes as you're describing it

sometimes maybe a very you know honest so it appears suspicion of science may saying that he was able to establish that it was indeed an illness and it spreads and soon or london right and i think part of his recognition with the disease is twofold i'm not only was he the first name it but he was the first to go back and say we may have seen this before and never called it anything never named it and he went back through some old there were very few but a few old michael texts and his mother told him stories of a similar kind of they call the epidemic come out or epidemic sleep that followed and at ninety flu pandemic in europe and they've you're continuing to track back in history and some of the physicians researching this said that they'd been the sleeping beauty rip van winkle some of the stories were inspired by this because there are very few diseases that would just put someone in a deep sleep for weeks at a time and then they awaken

and usually it's come up or death that this was a very unique type of disease if you look at the spring on that in a lot of your period is the national phenomenon on i mean we're going to london now we've got a new york i would think quite clearly a solo soldiers coming home our carriers who knows whether everyone is a carrier is afflicted by him and then there is a doctor named frederick hill in new york city and grown up in brooklyn i think and douglas thought about his experience makes a contribution to establishing does is in the center of a medical phenomenon that is in illinois

yes and one that i think most mysterious and confusing things for the doctors was that this did not this is not contagious disease it wasn't spreading from person to person and not within households not that hostile force but it was following the troops and all their tv news now mrs know nm all the american troops are coming in and out of new york so that was sort of the logical next place for the spread and tilly had been following some of the reports coming out of london because at that point when i first hit london people were wondering if it was some kind of new bio warfare and something that was brought in from the front they had no idea food poisoning there were a number of gases and by the time it hit new york which was about nineteen eighteen tilly had a number of patients he was at and practicing neurologist air with the neurological institute in new york and one of his but more poignant cases in the book i am a teenage girl that he saw that he is telling her parents he has doctors their parents standing by she's in this deep sleep and the bad they don't know how long i'm so sleep if she'll ever wake up and he

finally said to her parents we've done everything we can choose not to wake up from this about a third of these patients did die in that deep sleep and when he looked back at the girl tears were streaming down her face so that was one of the first goal he says he understands what has been served right they didn't really realize that for a while that these patients were following everything mr gerson well there are about thirty patients died above thirtieth basis of mr schiller's and they're the patient may wake up which brings me and that well the interesting thing is you do do not only and this is true it's too certainly three of four of the leading doctors play a role early on you also have in addition to specific patients are going to begin again was a very personal story and that is the case in virginia yes let's talk about the removal and yes it does being a forgotten epidemic and it was always something i was very aware of because my grandmother had a case of it and in nineteen twenty nine

in dallas texas she was about sixteen years old at the time and she went on the sleeper hundred and eighty days i was never able to finish school she had a slow recovery about another year after covering end mr chavez they went on to marry and live a relatively normal life and have children that i am most of my memories of her she seemed a little bit off detached and they're just not holy fair and everyone in the family would say what she's just been that way since the sleeping sickness and everyone shrugged it off and so for years i had heard about it in that context and when i was looking into researching the book further and money to possibly write a story about it i realize there was just nothing out there written on the subject and then i was a personal connection with my grandmother sort of part of me wanted to say interestingly use it that the oncoming island became a manslaughter and cyclists psychologist no typewriters i guess till a wannabe reporter begins as crews journalist and you said that

he was not afraid to it's for the unknown factors there were not easily explained in walking from probing more deeply talk about him a little bit more because since may his his patients is huge bailout with ruth ann and that's quite a story and also yes am another of his patients the history yes the decay stuart stuart rights case study in this book is and jesse and she's jp morgan's wife jenny of his wife and so he's a noted enough neurologist to be a physician to the morgan family and jesse's cases another sad and tragic one she was not able to recover from it and jack morton was distraught enough to donate a large sum of money to tell me to his research to this neurological institute in hopes of developing a

vaccine or treatment for this disease this is really the height of vaccine age and so a lot of physicians just generally treating patients were also working and doing research and toward these vaccines and tell me is just it is a very likeable interesting personally was a gifted writer who took a pay cut in order to become a physician and he went on to publish one of the best books we had on evolution and the evolution of the brain has fascinated by brain study i mean this was just really an interesting time period for brain study found that was one of things that fascinated me with all of these doctors and drew me to their story's somewhat it was just that this this idea of the combined and brain and mind and this was the first generation of neurosurgeons its large critters and neurology i'm just giving an example one world war one started they were wearing leather helmets by the end of it they were a business deal but it was the first chance the doctors had a lot of work here the work in the brain what what

the brain was doing controlling different parts of the body things that were affecting it that was inadvertently threw that the damage in the shrapnel damage that and it's a great breakthrough in brain studied during this time period for those of you just joining us i'm talking while it go across remote asleep the forgotten number that make an epidemic it was and forgotten and is an iphone but like forest dr samantha smith eli ed smith is a very jealous yes e j lee yes i had left when i decide to promise oversee two other long dr julie for is a it is a character in its own right he is he was at a really entertaining it passed a person to research he was a contemporary and friend of freud's and then call young's he was one of the first to bring really psychoanalysis to the us so he was often on the

french of the oven or a psychiatry and on new york's neurology one of the things that tony june leaf in a number of the characters in this book are doing is trying to position you work as a neurological center of the world during this time period coming out of world war one europe of previously been the place that everyone went for medical study including american physicians but the war changed so much of that that this was an opportunity for these doctors and the neurologists in new york to really make american medicine and more highly regarded and make new york the center neurological center of the world and this disease encephalitis a barge terrorizing really presents them with the opportunity to do that to research further to work on this vaccine and to really highlight american medicine you know your thumb if you go online to find him you're probably going to

find in secondarily because of his newest like a psychiatry and since encephalitis lethargic you probably don't bump into him first haircut barricades all the murder trial yes he was a witness for thor yes he was an alien asked an interesting as they call them in those days and found those with that for the case that was a main the book books have been written movies have been made about iraqis or killing the arctic center of white affair with his lovely wife a long as a famous case i was astounded to finally a little over a medical mystery and harry just jumped right out of the page and i take it that the pentagon recently added know i take it there the acquittal for little

sort of resulted in directly from delicious testimony yes he was one of the expert witness is one of the doctors on and is fairly common in that time period around that these psychiatry a spanner a psychiatrist to be called and his alias to testify will always is tilted it apparently it was yes casino in time to see the team to even receive his pay for it so hard to get them to recognize the new way god really answer was i'm going to get one titled his three ds well it is still another like interview with dr joseph a new tougher her in those days tougher any woman in those days to breakthrough in the professions you point out that public health was an opportunity for women and

that that's where she began to write but really as american medicine during this time period gained a lot more on the notoriety and respect it but medical schools got much more difficult and more expensive and so as a result he lost a lot of the quacks that have been there a round of the victorian time period this is watching the progressive era and a lot of these doctors the men coming out there they you know spent years paying back loans trying to make money at it became a much more difficult profession as a result public health was not a very viable option for a lot of these physicians it didn't pay very well and this is still at the height of a lot of these epidemics going around so unclean polio and they would emily had cholera or typhoid they just is testing these large cities like new york had a lot of the problem so we didn't have as much of a draw and he gave women an opportunity to side step in and not only of public health but also following some of the immigrant

neighborhoods on the mother's health children's health a lot of that was tied into women entering the medicine you know it strikes me that one of the things for you you pointed out that one of the things that made it so difficult to attract attention to this epidemic is it as its discovering and then spreads is that the world has flared it is fearful of an end and a flu pandemic flu is raging taking lives across the face of the planet an hear these doctors saying look out we gonna let them coming and it will wake up and we don't know about and a look at that's what makes the work of people like jos female on and on the siege elephant killing them so important it

is because this ended up i think a lot of that for the few theories in the book but one of them certainly is that this was overshadowed by the nineteen eighteen flu pandemic and i am one of the more frightening things is was it connected to it we dont know even today was it a consonant result relationship with the flu or was there just some relationship between the two but certainly the flu epidemic at overshadowed this one by far what this ended up with this particular disease what ended up being the more cruel nature of it was a lot of these patients came out of their case came out of their sleeve for their fever whatever their minimal symptoms were at that time to find out many years later that there were chronic symptoms so these relationships with tallying to leave neo and a long term lease some states with their patients who may have contracted back in nineteen eighteen sometimes they were soldiers sometimes one of them was a nurse in the war only to find that by the nineteen thirties they're coming down with these disability the chronic symptoms of the effect of the lights out it was essentially since

causing swelling encephalitis within the brain and that was true long term damage did it become apparent for many years to come so and that was one of the the real precious for these doctors was that that they get a close relationship to these patients and they were won by one going in institutions with no real future romel joseph a new patient sylvia about that was a frustrating encounter yeah sylvie had been a nurse a red cross nurse during world war one and it came from a fairly affluent nice family background never married and that she was just playing tennis one day when she noticed her arm started to shake the symptoms got worse and she eventually went to see i'm a neurologist and ended up as one of joseph emails patients and she has a theory common to what happened to a lot of adults with encephalitis lethargic at that the damage either immediately from the sleep the swelling or years later on a damaged apart the brink of the basal ganglia and one of the things

it's switchboard within the brain and one of the messages most important as his country they are the ones that control movement so for these patients the damaged opening and essentially gave an extreme form of parkinson's and she is you can follow her case and see that she slowly goes from this tremor to eventually being completely wheelchair bound and bed down before dying relatively young frown on this extreme parkinson's that was really just a chronic symptoms and as you point out a patient can suddenly feel a pain in the film as if the splinter is clear and the mindful that may be available and the next morning to shoulder saying you're sleeping and perhaps none wake up as nick is your grandmother on a day on an eight days later she did come out of the island and sublime and their lives a relatively normal life all

over there with the suit that she was affected by the oil is amazing that the un these epidemics strike and then sort of fade away they do one of the interesting things i found was this connection to parkinson's at the time some doctors started putting forth a study saying that this is what causes parkinson's is the sleeping sickness epidemic and one of them even said that eighteen and by the nineteen eighties nineteen nineties we will no longer see parkinson's they were so confident of this connection and then that during this epidemic average age onset parkinson's was about thirty five thirty six years old so it shows you how what a large impact it is having on a population and that was the most common chronic sentence for these patients but as you probably know that the sentence for the children to be much worse the damage to their brains you know you're journalists when lawyer

what is hard work and read your books they won't understand it lights the world's smallest flows so smoothly it's part of a it's part of a plot really they don't understand what blood sweat and tears sometimes goes into making and read away at the laws which are regimen for i really like this nature do it like that this genre to me is just great nonfiction narrative nonfiction because my first love was always creative writing am i thought about going into fiction writing at one point and i really loved the creative aspect of this which is the research and applying that research and to build a real story around it to develop these characters on real people to develop what new york was like in the nineteen twenties and so i think probably have my time just researching and now to give the book the story of lot of texture and in addition to researching the disease in this case sleeping sickness and most people i've written about and not

been back payments they're not alive biographies written about them and so it takes a lot of digging into how firsthand you know materials going into has been a lot of time in your pointer old case books and case studies and in letters and diaries from these doctors to it to really understand their relationship with a patient and what's happening and that time period so it is latest attack what that way spinning have time researching and then trying to hold back into a really clear and poignant story of you found that research for your books is made much easier as result of texas to new technology definitely yes and then my previous book was on yellow fever is here in the south than elsewhere and certainly the internet and research makes it a lot easier to locate some of these unusual hard to find tax that could be in any library collection anywhere in the country and selling internet helps find that they also a

lot of his letters are starting to scan in material so with the yellow fever but for example the university of virginia has all walter reed's letters and personal correspondence gay and then from when he was doing his experiments and to demonstrate that it was spreading yellow fever so that made it a lot simpler for me to stay home and work and not move to another city for months at a time to do the research we have just a minute lengths to look into it i am and then taking a departure from the death of the season may i am looking at it said a jewel heist from victorian and edwardian london and the beginning of scotland yard forensics and the beginning of its detective work in tracking down these thieves and it's really have a fascinating scholarly your detective and really likeable charming and went into the sabbath the play between these two still <unk> big change pace yes thank you so much for coming thank you for having me and i think all of us for watching on been talking with milo miley caldwell crosby

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