Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - The Sleeping Sickness

Episode Date: August 30, 2022

Starting In 1915, cases of something known as encephalitis lethargica started popping up around the globe. Symptoms were varied, but included some sort of lethargy or tiredness, with some more extreme manifestations. But exactly how many people were infected and what exactly caused this remains one of medical history’s greatest mysteries. So, yeah, we’re going to leave you hanging on that. Sorry.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, talk is about books. One, two, one, two, three, four. Hello everybody and welcome to Saul Bones, a marital tour for Miss Guided Medicine.

I said four. That's a marital four? A marital tour for Miss Guided Medicine? That's ridiculous. I don't understand your grammatical sense. That's not, I think you're confused. It's a marital tour of Miss Guided Medicine. That's correct.

And you know, the marital part doesn't have that much to do with our show. It was just like another M, you know what I mean? Yeah, well, I mean, we are married. Yeah. I think it informs the relationship we have with each other. Married. Well, and like, why we interact?

Like, we do, don't you think? Well, you think people, if we didn't clarify that we were married, people would be like, whoa, the chemistry between these two is off the charts. I'm shipping Justin and Sidney like crazy. That's how I was gonna ask, do you think people would ship us? Yeah, people would ship us. If we weren't already married, like if we were just two.

Their names are already the same. Their last names are the same, it's meant to be. Well, I mean, in this, in this reality, I would have I would have kept my made name, Smirl. I wouldn't have changed it to Macrolyon a flyer. Can I be dark? Can I be dark strong arms then? I mean, if we're changing our thing, I would like to be dark strong arms. That's Ernie at law.

You know, I've always believed that you can be anything that you want. But this is this is the original. So we've been married since the beginning of time. You have brought all of the cat in the kitchen. I brought the kitty. She was standing at the top of the stairs and crying because she missed us. So I brought her down to the basement with us to record. So now if you hear her begging to leave the room here in a second, you'll know

what's going on. She won't. She'll climb up. Sometimes she sits on my shoulder like a parrot. She's precious. Okay, so none of this has anything to do with medicines, any? No, Justin, we've gotten, I was gonna think the listeners, you just so many of you sent it in. There's too many to think now, who sent in this topic suggestion.

Justin, there's a show on called Sandman. Yes, I know. It's based on the Neil Gaiman graphic novel series. Yeah. I haven't gotten around to watching it. Yeah, I've read the's based on the Neil Gaiman graphic novel series. Yeah. I haven't gotten around to watching it. Yeah, I've read the first volume of the Omnibus. You know, it's a good graphic novel if there's an Omnibus.

If you see Omnibus, that's good stuff right there or good stuffies. Does yours have an Omnibus? Of graphic. We have a recently discontinued box set of the first three books. So no Omnibus yet, but boy, when we get that omnibus, that money's gonna come rolling in. That'll be the real heyday in my mid-50s when all the task-graphing novels are out. A lot of our listeners are watching this show because there was a medical condition referenced

on the show. And so this is where this episode comes from. I've got many suggestions that we should look into a sleeping sickness that is mentioned on Sandman. And when I say that, I know immediately you're going to think like sleeping sickness as an African sleeping sickness is sometimes how it's referred because of the fact that it is endemic to parts of the continent Africa. Specifically, it is called Tripana, Soma, Brucey eye, and it is transmitted by the

T.C. fly. And I think, and that didn't mean for that to rhyme. I think that we have, have we talked about that before? I don't remember. Maybe. I don't know. I'll have to double check. This is not what we're talking about. That is probably the sleeping sickness you're most familiar with. If you hear that, like colloquial term'll have to double check. This is not what we're talking about. That is probably the sleeping sickness you're most familiar with if you hear that colloquial term. That's something else. This is a sleeping sickness, not the sleeping sickness. It is a sickness that makes people sleep

and the one that they are referencing in San Man is something called Incephalitis Letharjica, which is different. And what is it? It's one of the biggest mysteries in medical history. Ooh, how did it just take us this long to get here? I don't know. It's a good question.

I have encountered little bits and pieces about in cephalitis, lethargicum many times in my various researches, and I don't know why I never like, like skip to that one, you know, like jump, skip to that one. Sometimes it's just like something seems hard so you don't deal with it. You just decide not to engage with it. I'd do that sometimes.

Yeah, well, I, yeah, I guess that's true. Sometimes if I know it's gonna take more time and I don't have that much time, in cephalytic lethargic, as you may imagine, the lethargic a part of it is referencing the severe lethargy or sleepiness that it causes. Correct. And cephalytic sleepiness that it causes. Correct. And cephalitis is inflammation of the brain.

Okay. Okay. Idiscus or inflammation is this is... Okay. What? Say again? Sorry. Idiscus inflammation is the sentence that I was attempting.

Okay. I'm sorry. I'm on hospital services. My brain is lethargic. Not medically. When you say lethargic to a doctor, that's a, that means something very scary. I just mean that I'm tired. Got it. Not medically lethargic. Not clinically. You're, you're colloquially. Yeah. Yeah. You're still the top of your game. Sydney exhausted is still better than 90% of the doctors out there. Well, I appreciate that. I'm not at work right now.

I'm at home in case anyone's worried about how tired I am. Were you out of the assumption that? Yeah. I'm talking about how the gear I get on the hospital service and I'm really tired. You're like, oh, man, that sounds like your bones were really bad shape. I need like 35 minutes. And then I'll be right back with you.

You got a cast, baby. Yeah. Keep breathing. You're the mattresses ain't going to sell themselves. So it's 1916. You are Dr. Constantine Vaughan Aconomo. Okay. Aconomo.

I have in my possession one rapier, five rations and a mysterious scrap of paper that says follow the chimneys Follow the chimneys. I know it's a rock it. Right? You want to know what I thought I had a maybe a Mary poppin style I've been working on their tazharks and now I'm like I'm like a master world of pillars I'm just gonna start to this fiction. You're working at the psychiatric neurological clinic of the University of Vienna Okay, so this is where you are You're working at the psychiatric neurological clinic of the University of Vienna. Okay. So this is where you are. And by the way, because you're Dr. Economo, you come from a very wealthy Romanian family. So you're also going to be a baron in this story.

Baron, Vaughan, Economo. Oh, why? Yes. But he prefers Dr. Of course. Please. Now, Dr. Vaughan Economo, Dr. Economo, Dr. Vaughan, please. Dr. Vanacanamo. Now, Dr. Vanacanamo, Dr. Vanacanamo. Dr. Vanacanamo.

Dr. Vanacanamo. Dr. Vanacanamo. He starts noticing patients coming in with a strange new constellation of symptoms. These patients have all been admitted under other diagnoses, right? Because people probably said, well, this looks most like this. Even though it didn't look exactly like meningitis. It looks kind of like meningitis, so we'll call it that. Or kind of like MS, or it's kind of like delirium.

So they were calling it, all these different patients had been diagnosed with something different, even though maybe their symptoms weren't perfect for whatever that diagnosis was. But they all have some things in common. He starts to notice they have some strange neurological symptoms like irregular eye movements.

Their eyes will sometimes get locked in positions and unable to move, like in an upward gaze. And they can't move them. Or they have weird twitches suddenly, or what are called choreo form movements, which are like sort of uncontrolled dance-like movements. Choreo. Yeah.

Form. The form of dance. Like dance-like movements. Those are most usually associated with Huntington's disease. It's where you see this sort of neurological symptom. So they have a variety of these sort of neurological symptoms. Sometimes they seem to just sit in almost like a catatonic state. They just sit and they stare and they don't speak. They are, they are

tend to be very sleepy. All of them seem to be completely exhausted. I've spent lots of time sleeping, except the few who seem kind of the opposite, like hyperkinetic and almost manic and can't stop moving and not themselves. They have psychiatric manifestations. You start, as he starts talking to these patients, all of them had symptoms that sound a little like the flu at first. They had fevers, they had sore throats, some of them had headaches or nausea. So like something that they may have just written off as, you know, we were beginning to understand

infections at this point in history. So like, I caught something, I got sick. You would assume you'd get better. Yeah. But then it shifted into something very different. So Vaughan Akonamo began talking to other doctors at other hospitals in the area and discovering that they were also seeing cases like this and Nobody quite knew what to make of it. It's a fantasy before stuff that yes

That did not fit any other diagnoses it had it had aspects of different diagnoses but As you were like you didn't want to label it one of those things because you couldn't feel certain. And then as they started looking back, they noticed, Von Economo started noticing that there have been cases at these random hospitals since like 1915. So for a little while now, this had been reported.

Not a new thing then. But it seemed to be more prominent now. Okay. Like, there were lots more of them. So something had caused these case numbers to erupt of whatever this thing is that is still in name. So after he kind of collects all this information from all these other doctors and all these cases

and all of these sort of reports on these patients. In 1917, he publishes an account of the cases and a definition of the condition and he calls it in Sepulitis lethargic, it's sequelae and treatment. So, he's- So, what do you mean? All of the stuff that can happen because of it. Okay.

Like, all of the clinical manifestations and complications and long-term effects and everything that happens to a human when they hatched. Anyway, he would call it encephalitis lethargicle because it seemed to be some sort of inflammatory process of the brain and then also people were very tired. And even though he caught it that, a lot of people started referring to it as von-Economos disease.

Which is- Don't love that one. Well, it's weird, I think it's catchier von-achonimos disease. Which is- Don't love that one. Well, what's weird is, I think it's catchier with Vonachonimos disease. About a connoble. But it didn't catch on because I don't, I mean, most people, if they talk, you know how everybody's talking about

in cephalytis lothargic all the time? And they call it that. Yeah. All the time. Yeah, everybody's talking about it. Like everybody's always talking about it. They don't shut them. Like every party I go to, that's all that anyone is talking about. And by anyone, I mean, I'm telling people about it. talking about it. They don't shut them. Like every party I go to, that's all that anyone is talking about.

And by anyone, I mean, I'm telling people about it. They're like, why haven't you had an episode on this? And you're like, I'm scared. That was scared to do it. It seemed hard, it's like I didn't do it. I don't. It's cared. So again, as he writes down sort of this account of it,

you kind of get like a definition, right? So if you're going to find a new condition, if you're going to declare that you have discovered a new medical condition, you kind of get like a definition, right? So if you're going to find a new condition, if you're going to declare that you have discovered a new medical condition, you have to create a definition of it. Like what is it then? What sort of things have to be present to say, this is what it is? What do you do this with COVID, right? Like people got the coronavirus, how did we know they had COVID-19? What were the constellation of symptoms? How did we test for it? How do we define it? How do we know they had COVID-19? What were the constellation of symptoms? How did we test for it? How did we define it?

How do we say like, you have COVID? Isn't it weird? Remember there was a lot of symptoms popping up early on? It's like, here's one thing we know about it for sure. It's like two weeks later. It's like, we were wrong about that. There was the gas leak. And we were sorry.

We messed up. Yeah, can I tell you, by the way, how many patients now I'm caring for that have gastrointestinal symptoms that like that's the prominent feature? It's very strange. It also is evolving. Yeah, multiple, multiple. COVID's still out there, folks.

Hey, not a joke. Not a joke. Take it from a doctor working in a hospital. Just be smart. So please get vaccinated. In specialized in South Africa, he lays it down as characterized by first this sort of pro-dram of fever and headache and sometimes double vision and you feel tired.

But it seems more like a viral kind of illness, like the flu or whatever, something like that. And then it progresses to a couple different sort of, there's a couple different ways it can progress. But you get a variety of symptoms like we talked about either. You're sleepy all the time. You can have that sort of comatose state that we talked about, or catatonic state.

You can have an ocular geric crises, which is when your eyes move in positions and you can't move them back, like you can't control your eyes. And even can progress to this like Parkinsonism kind of picture eventually. One particular interesting thing is chlasomania is a symptom that was associated with it, which is compulsive shouting. Oh, interesting.

That was something that people could have. Yeah, it can be sort of like ticks you can see in different tick disorders. Like tick TIC. TIC. Okay. Like people yelling like like coprolelia referring to yelling like bad things inappropriate things. Swares. Using say, I'm not yelling necessarily a bit saying inappropriate things. Swares. Using, say, and not yelling necessarily, but saying inappropriate things. Curses. Uncontrollable and we're like, yeah. That's it.

Sexual, whatever. Those kinds of things. Things that you don't mean to say, but you can't stop it and then you say it. Clasmonia is like, you can't, you can't modulate the volume of your voice. Yeah. Like that character or a real fair.

Like that girl that's her real fair. The guy who can't modulate the volume of his voice. So it character or a red-ass or a red-ass or a red-ass. The guy who can't modulate the volume of his voice. So it's like compulsive yelling. So he writes about this. It's in Vienna. He's seen it around this area, but it's about to go global. You just like, we know illnesses do. They love it.

They like to engulf the whole planet. And just like another illness in 1917 that we have talked about on the show, many times recently, the influence of pandemic, the misnamed Spanish flu, but that is how you may have heard it. It was not, let's not blame Spain. Not Spain's fault.

Nope. But just like it would do soon, in Sepulitis lethargicah was about to be carried whatever it was by the presence of World War I. So as soldiers, Chris crossed the globe and people were displaced and moved. Much like the Band-Aid or the Hershey bar before it, it's prevalence throughout the World War,

made it a household item that everybody had to have. Well, I mean, in this case, illness that some people got, but the metaphor still stands. Yes, exactly. And again, with World War I, we saw the exact same thing happen with... I'm not sure about the Hershey-Burthing. It sounded true when I said it.

Go on. You said that before, chocolate bars. I feel like I saw it on an episode of foods that build America. I don't remember if that was exact bar. This is not a food podcast. I can lie about food all day folks. This isn't doughboys. I can't be held accountable for my food takes. So anyway, because of World War One, you started to see just like the flu pandemic would spread. You started to see cases of encephalitis, lethargic, popping up all over the globe. So it started maybe in these parts of Europe, but it soon spread to all parts of Asia and Africa and North America and Central America and South America.

It was everywhere. Everywhere they were seeing cases. And I will say that it's hard to say an exact number because I mean, one, you have to imagine it wasn't as easy to aggregate all this information. We're talking about it over. It's outdated. Yes. And we're talking about a time period where not only would it have been difficult to aggregate it, we're also in the middle of a war. So people weren't necessarily interested in collaborating with their information. But it's so it's hard to know how many cases there were.

And it's also hard because as you can tell from these symptoms, I'm telling you, it can be kind of vague and the presentations were varying. And so who actually had it and who was just diagnosed with it incorrectly, it's really difficult to say. But it is estimated that between the years, 1915 and 1926, a million or so people got it. Maybe more, maybe less.

It's hard to say, there was one study that sort of estimated it at 500,000, but it was a study just done in like North America to just estimate certain, anyway. And we missed a ton of it. There was probably a ton that was never diagnosed. So it's probably more than a million. Or maybe less. Unless we were misdiagnosing people and that it would be less.

Less. So just to recap, it was either very, very many a normal amount or much less than that. We don't know. So with that great display of mathematic prowess, let's go to the billing department. As we say, every time at this segment, I'm gonna run up stairs and flip this spaghetti squash. The medicines, the medicines that I skill in my cards for the mouth. This week, the greatest discovery becomes greatest trek. That's because greatest trek is for way more than just discovery.

We're the hit show on Maximum Fund that covers all the new Star Trek shows. Lower decks, strange new worlds, Picard, Prodigy, Discovery, and any other Star Trek show Paramount throws at us. Come check it out for our funny and formative recaps of all the new stuff that Star Trek Industrial Complex turns out. It's in your pod catcher every Tuesday. Subscribe to Greatest Trek. It's a new Star Trek podcast from the makers of the Greatest Generation. Hey there, it's Santa Vell Gourwitch.

And I'm Lera House. We host Tiny Victories, the 15 minute podcast that's about the little things. Getting into the Tiny Victory frame of mine is about recognizing minor accomplishments and fleeting joys. Isn't it a wonderful day when the first password you try actually works. When it's freezing cold outside and toasty is all get out in my shower, my tiny victory is that I turn off the water and get on with my day. We can't change this big dumb world but we can celebrate the tiny wins. So join us on Maximum Fun or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Let's get tiny. Okay, the spaghetti squash has been flipped. I'm safely back. It's looking great. Okay. So as I said, somewhere around a million people, world like got it. It was diagnosed more in some countries than others, probably just awareness was a big part of it. And then there was also like they made a lot more diagnoses in urban areas than rural areas, but like it's hard to say what, you know, what like was

that being missed or whatever. It tended to affect people between the ages of 10 and 30, although there were people slightly younger, slightly older than that. That seemed to be the brunt of who it affected. At times, initially they didn't think it was a contagious disease. Why? Well, because they would have a presentation of just a single member of a household, like just one member of a family would come in with it. And the rest of the family was well. Why? Well, I don't know. I'm telling you, it's still one of history's greatest mysteries. Oh, this is gonna be unsatisfying. Okay, go ahead. Did you like, is this like Jack the Ripper finally solved?

Case closed where you're like finally gonna tell me everybody would happen? I mean, I have theories. Okay, go on. You've got a theory. So at times, like just, you know, they'd bring in one kid who had it, or just one parent or whatever, like one person family.

But then there was this one outbreak in Derby, where there was this home for girls, where out of 21 people, 12 of them got sick within this one girl's home, and six of them actually died from it. So then it really seemed like, well, I mean, this has got to be transmitted person to person. Like, how would you have a density of illness like this if it wasn't?

And so it was really unclear, like, is this something people are catching? Or is it something that everybody's catching, but only some people are reacting to? Maybe it's environmental in some way because you have all these people. In one, yes. It was very difficult. The forms that people could have because there were slightly different sort of like classifications what kind of form you have and you could progress from one to the other. But generally speaking some had what was called the

somnolent upthalmaplegic form which was the most deadly by like half of people who got this form probably passed away. Others had more of, and that, you know, somnolent, obviously you're sleeping all the time and your eyes are uncontrolled. You can't control your eyes. Others had more of like a hyperkinetic form where they had all of these strange uncontrollable movements and this manic behavior and they would have like all these psychiatric manifestations, psychosis, was common hallucinations and that kind of thing. And then some had this amostatic achinetic form, which basically means they were kind

of rigid, had what we call like a waxy flexibility, meaning you could move their arm into a position. It was movable, like a wax, but then they would hold it there. That's weird. So you could raise their arm up and it would say- Well, that'd be so disconcerning of it. And they had like a masked face kind of appearance. The third form is somewhat similar to Parkinson's, not identical, but somewhat similar to Parkinson's.

And many of them did progress to what looked like Parkinson's disease. But it wasn't. No, it's different than Parkinson's. It was a, I mean, it is a clinical syndrome that you could call Parkinson's like, but it is a post-incephalitic Parkinson's, right? Like, it is, as opposed to primary Parkinson's disease that people have genetically. This was, as a result of this encephalitis that you got, you have a, you, you appear to have a Parkinson's

like condition. Does that make sense? Yeah. I mean, I guess it's semantics, but it's not. I don't want to give the impression that in cephalitis, lethargic is linked to every person who has Parkinson's disease. Mm. Just some similarities. Yes. So on top of that, some progress of that. It's the same germ.

No, no, no. Parkinson's disease is not a germ. Sorry. Don't do that to the same germ. No, no, no, Parkinson's disease is not a germ. Sorry. Don't do that to me. Okay. So anyway, the so there was this Parkinson's like phase that some would progress to that would happen like months or even years later sometimes. Wow. Like past you were covering from all your symptoms. And it was sort of like at the end of the day, if you take all the cases together, it was like a third of a third. At the end of the day, take all the cases together. Da da da da da da da da,

so you can say for the life of the poor, da da da da da da da. Sorry. I wasn't ready for that. I know. Sorry. No, that was great. You can't say anything about it. Not exactly to leap into labor risk.

Come on. When they looked at everything, it was like, it was like a third, a third, a third, a third of patients actually succumbed to Encephalitis, a third of them seemed to get better and be fine and a third of them progressed to this chronic sort of form and had long-term sequela manifestations,

side effects, complications. Hey, what's... note? Has nothing do they think? Do you know why they call weed chronic? No. Me neither. Wouldn't that have been interesting if I'd know? I just feel I was like- That was just a wild thing to throw out there. I was sitting here wondering, you said the word chronic. I was wondering like, why do they call weed chronic? I was like, I should have city, I bet she does, she's a doctor. But you're not a weedologist, so- Not a weedologist. Not a weedologist. I don't even have a prescribing card. So, the people who did progress these symptoms would have some of the eye symptoms chronically,

some of the other neurological symptoms would stay chronically. There's also, again, a lot of psychiatric manifestations associated with the chronic in cephalytis, lethargic, that changes in mood. Some people would have feelings of euphoria with increased sex drive. I liked this symptom, excessive puns. Oh, yeah. Yes, silliness. Because of all of these neurologic and psychiatric, considering the time period we were in, a lot

of people with the chronic form ended up institutionalized for many years as a result, because they were not necessarily able to care for themselves, or because at the time having those sort of conditions, that's what a lot of people did, as institutionalized family members, who had psychiatric conditions, or just neurological conditions like epilepsy, you could have been institutionalized for. So, so a lot of people ended up institutionalized

unfortunately. And this was, there's a book by Dr. Oliver Sacks called Awakening's. Those written in 1973, that's the account of some of these people who were still living in these institutions with this chronic and cephalitis lethargic. Is that a movie? This is also a movie in 1990. Yeah, I heard that. We have De Niro and Rob Williams. Wow, yeah. So, as a... Is he sacks?

Huh? Was it based on that? Was he sacks? Was it based on... Yeah, yeah. It was Dr. Oliver Sacksis who wrote the book Awakening's and the movie was based on that book. About like these people who had been living there for years,

with this condition that nobody ever figured out what it was. And the people who succumbed to Encephalitis Lethargic, by the way, in case you're curious, how do you pass away from it? It was usually because of the neurological symptoms, your respiratory drive would fail, respiratory failure. Which again, like some people immediately saw a lot of similarities as the years went on, I shouldn't say immediately, as the years went on, saw a lot of similarities to polio with some of this.

People going into respiratory failure, iron lung, all of that stuff. That was a question that would come up later. Now, I know weird. What a weird constellation of different effects. That's so wild. And it was a really like, and I will say because of this to sort of finish the story about Dr. Sacks, that piece of it, because of the similarity to Parkinson's and Dr. Sacks was treating these patients many years later. In the 60s, a drug came out called LDopa, which we use to treat Parkinson's disease.

We have many other drugs now, but that was the first one. And he sort of experimentally gave this to some of these patients, because since the symptoms were so similar, maybe this would help. And it did seem to help. I think accounts of how much it helped were a little more optimistic than maybe the reality. I don't think everyone was, I don't think anybody was necessarily cured by it. I do think it seemed to improve some patience. I don't know how much and I don't know for how long, but it did give this sort of impression like, is there a link here? And

I should say a lot of what they know about how affected, how it affected the brain and why we know it was an encephalitis. If you look at the time period when this pandemic happened, we were able to do like autopsies and look at the brain tissue and that kind of thing as these patients later on passed away. And so they were able to look at the tissue and see like what areas were inflamed and know sort of what what was going on. Right? I mean, they actually did that to look at the brain, but they weren't able to isolate a cause just because you see a pattern of inflammation in the brain doesn't necessarily, it can give you clues as to what caused it, but it doesn't necessarily tell you definitively unless you find it there. Like if you find the virus. So this pandemic was relatively short lived, right?

In the big picture. And it was largely restricted to just this one period in history. There have been outbreaks of things and case reports of things other times that we've retroactively gone back and tried to say like, well, like for instance, in 1580 there was this fever and sleepy

kind of illness that hit a lot of Europe. Was that it? There was another one in London in the in 1673 to 1675. There were like these isolated accounts that occurred here and there. There was a sleep sickness in Germany from 1712 to 1713. There was something in Italy between 1889 and 1890 called that they called Nona, which again was the somnolent kind of illness with Parkinson's-like symptoms later on. So there are all these sort of like things, but it's so hard to go back. And what you're really just reading are accounts, right? Like you're not looking at patients, you're not taking histories, you're not doing exams, you're not even looking at bodies, you're just going back and reading historical accounts

of an illness and trying to see if it fits this modern account. And there's lots of flaws in that. But it's been 90, well, a hundred years since this happened, have we been seeing more cases since? So there have been a couple isolated, like, maybe similar incidents since then, but no, no outbreak, certainly. And even the cases by modern standards that we thought maybe are in cephalytis lethargic don't exactly fit these older case definitions.

Is it so hard to say that we've seen it again? We know the tools of the time were crude compared to what we have today. Is there possibly, they're just like misdiagnosing to different things or misdiagnosing something that we are familiar with today? Absolutely. Well, I think that it is 100% certain that some of the patients that were diagnosed with this had something that we would have been able to recognize today. I think that's 100% certain.

Our diagnostic techniques are so much more advanced. And I mean, we discover new illnesses all the time. We're able to catalog things better. But they're carrying lots of people every day. That's the reference to the room for all of you. Room fans out there. Thank you Tommy Weissau. I know you're a listener.

Yeah, he's always a fan. But, so definitely, definitely, there were people tossed into this basket who did not have it. I think that that is beyond a doubt, true. But I think there was enough of something going on that there's also something that was missed, right? Weird.

Like there definitely was something that happened to some of these people that caused some of these symptoms and maybe if it happened again, we would be able to isolate it. The theory is open, it happens again. I mean, that would be... Well, I hope not. But the theories, by the way, because of its temporal relationship to the influenza pandemic

and because a lot of people who had in cephalytis-ophagus were like tested later to see if they had had the flu and they did there was this thought like is it a post influenza thing you know we've seen that covid can do many things could this could that strain of influenza that year have caused these sort of long term neurological or like some sort of autoimmune reaction after you got over the flu, could that have happened? But the problem with that is that one, not everybody who had it ever had the flu, and two, so many people had the flu that statistically it's hard to say, you know what I mean?

Like finding that relationship, it's like, well, I mean, it's like right now, frankly, everybody's getting COVID. I mean, unfortunately, and so it would be hard to connect it to anything right now, because it's so prominent. Does that make sense? Yeah, for sure.

So it's hard to say that anything to do with the flu. There have been studies done in the 2000s, actually. A lot of people looking back to try to isolate from like tissue and things like that to try to find something, to try to link it with different ideologies. There was some recent research that suggested maybe a polio-like virus,

like an intero virus in that family, that was found in many of the cases. But it's still not certain. We think it's something contagious, something infectious that seems most likely, something viral seems most likely. Some sort of post viral reaction out of immune things seems very likely. But what it was for sure and will it happen again?

We don't know. Well, I think we can be certain of one thing after hearing all this that Snoop misheard the term hydroponic and just shortened. He thought it was hydroponic and then just shortened it. Well, that's going to do it for us here at Saba. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks to taxpayers for using their song Medicines is the Intro and Entrepreneur program. Thanks to the Max Fun Network and thanks to you for listening. Thanks to taxpayers for use. Their song Medicines is the intro and algebra program. Thanks to the Max Fun Network and thanks to you for listening. That's going to

do it for us for this week. Until next time, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Alright! Audience supported.