Chapter 8. “Green Thumb Virologist”: Saint Lo uis Encephalitis; Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis...
Throughout much of recorded human history mysterious epidemics ravaged
widespread areas involving large numbers of individuals with serious illness and with a
high percentage of deaths. Examples include the Plague of Athens during the
Peloponnesian War described by the Greek historian, Thucydides (1), the infamous
“Black Death” during the 14th century in Europe and Asia Minor (2), and the world wide
1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic. The advent in the 19th and 20th century of the
microbiological sciences, including bacteriology, parasitology and virology, helped to
pinpoint the etiologies of some of the common bacterial and parasitic causes of illness. A
group of illnesses, however, involving the brain and central nervous system, producing
the syndromes of fever, lethargy, coma, neurological involvement and death, and
described by popular medical science writers as the “Sleepy Death” were giving up their
secrets with great reluctance.
During World War I in 1916-1917 and prior to the influenza outbreak, von
Economo (3) reported on a pandemic in Vienna, Austria and carefully described the
clinical and pathologic features of a disease that he labeled “lethargic encephalitis”, also
variously labeled “encephalitis lethargica” or von Economo’s disease. Thereafter it
appeared in epidemic form in many parts of the world including the United States in
- After1926, no further epidemics occurred. Pathologic features included
inflammatory, destructive and degenerative changes in the gray areas of the brain and
involved predominantly the basal ganglia, midbrain and pons. The clinical features were
often fulminant but occasionally went through stepwise phases to a chronic stage with