Encephalitis Lethargica - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

Hawes, the curate in Agatha Christie's book The Murder at the Vicarage (1930), was described as suffering from this syndrome.

The discovery by Oliver Sacks that L-DOPA could relieve some symptoms was described in his book Awakenings in 1973. The book was used by Harold Pinter as the basis of his one-act play A Kind of Alaska, performed in 1982 starring Judi Dench. Awakenings, a 1990 movie starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, is also based on the book. The Molly Caldwell Crosby book Asleep (2010) describes the history of the disease and the epidemic of the 1920s. The 2012 novel, Umbrella, by Will Self centres on the occurrence of this disease and its later treatment with L-DOPA.

The Eighties US post-hardcore band Big Black recorded a song about the Encephalitis lethargica epidemic called "L-Dopa" (1987).

The disease plays a prominent role in the first issue of Neil Gaiman's comic book Sandman (as featured in The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, Sandman: Doll's House, and Sandman Vol. 1, 1991); the disease, usually referred to by its nickname "sleepy sickness" and only once as its medical name, is attributed to the imprisonment of the sleep-master Dream in 1916 by an occultist.

The disease is researched and mentioned in the Canadian television show ReGenesis, in the last few episodes of the second series (2006). The disease is also involved in one of the episodes in the American science fiction television show Alphas, called a "A short time in paradise" (2011), in which the antagonist causes Encepahilitis lethargica to afflict his victims.