The Mystery of the Sleepy Sickness
The hosts explore encephalitis lethargica, also known as the sleepy sickness, a mysterious early 20th-century epidemic that caused profound sleep disturbances, movement disorders, psychiatric changes, and often death. They explain von Economo's classification of acute and chronic forms, the later emergence of post-encephalitic parkinsonism, and how Oliver Sacks's work with L-DOPA inspired the book and film 'Awakenings.' The episode reviews competing theories about the disease's cause and transmission, modern autoimmune hypotheses, and the haunting experience of patients who were conscious yet immobile for decades.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
Josh and Chuck examine the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, a 40-year U.S. Public Health Service study in which hundreds of poor Black men in Macon County, Alabama with syphilis were misled, denied effective treatment, and used as research subjects without informed consent. They trace the medical and historical background of syphilis, how and why the study was designed and allowed to continue through the discovery of penicillin and the Nuremberg trials, and the whistleblowing that finally exposed it in 1972. The episode also explores the long-term impact on Black Americans' trust in medicine, subsequent ethical and legal reforms, and related abuses such as the Guatemalan syphilis experiments.