For years, sometimes decades, victims remained conscious but completely unable to move, trapped like living statues.

Encephalitis lethargica is an unusual form of encephalitis, also known of as “sleepy sickness.” The condition was first defined in 1917 by Constantin von Economo, a neurologist who described the ...

In 1917, at the height of the Great War, a new and mysterious disease emerged into the world, before vanishing a few years later. Although it was to prove less destructive than the 1918 influenza ...

Currently a features writer at Collider, Elisa Guimarães is an arts and entertainment journalist and a critic with over a decade of experience. Passionate about movies and TV shows as a whole, she ...

James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile James is a ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. “People have forgotten what life is all about,” Robert De Niro’s character says in the film Awakenings after being revived from ...

Truth, it's often said, is stranger than fiction. The neurological illness affected people across the world during World War I. “Some begged for sleep that wouldn’t come, whilst others lived as ...