Constantin von Economo announced the spread of encephalitis lethargica / Peak District became UK's first national park - April 17

On this day in 1917, neurologist Constantin von Economo announced the probable spread of a viral disease, encephalitis lethargica, at a spread of a viral disease at a meeting of the Vienna Society for Psychiatry and Neurology. / On this day in 1951, Peak District National Park was established.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, y'all, we're rerunning two episodes today. Enjoy the show,
Hi Um Eves, Welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that reveals a little bit more about history
day by day. The day was April seventeen, nineteen seventeen.

(00:27):
After seeing many patients with varying symptoms including lethargy and
odd eye movements, Romanian Austrian psychiatrists Constantine von Economo announced
the probable spread of a viral disease at a meeting
of the Vienna Society for Psychiatry and Neurology. The disease,
which was spreading all over the world, became known as

(00:50):
encephalitis lethargica or epidemic encephalitis. The so called sleeping sickness
put many people into a deep sleep and often resulted
in death. Our post and Stephilitic Parkinstone is m a
progressive neurodegenerative syndrome that develops after encephalitis. While the epidemic
was in full swing in the late nineteen tens, in

(01:11):
nineteen twenties, the number and types of symptoms increased rapidly.
There were similar illnesses that popped up around the world
before the en stphilitis lethargica epidemics started in the early
nineteen hundreds. For instance, African sleeping sickness, which garnered attention
in the late eighteen hundreds, has symptoms like sleepiness and apathy,

(01:34):
and there was a disease known as La Nona, which
was a post fluid complication characterized by somnolence that was
prominent in northern Italy and central Europe in eighteen eighty
nine and eighteen ninety. Somnolence just means a person feels
sleepy or drowsy, or sleeps for a really long time,

(01:54):
but the earliest reports of people affected by the encephalitis
lethargica epidemic are from nineteen sixteen, when much of the
world was occupied with the First World War. In fact,
the troops marched across Europe during the war likely helped
spread the disease quickly. In France, doctor saw soldiers who
had fallen into a deep sleep, and while Dr Constantine

(02:16):
von Economo was working at a psychiatric neurological clinic in Vienna,
he began seeing patients with strange variations of neurological symptoms.
They had been diagnosed with conditions like meningitis, multiplus sclerosis
and delirium, but those diagnoses didn't quite seem to fit
the bill. They had malaise, fevers, trouble with their eye muscles,

(02:39):
and a lot of them had lethargy, so von Economo
figured all these cases stemmed from a sleeping sickness. Once
many of the affected patients began dying, he realized how
urgent the need to study the condition was. Not long
after the April seventeenth meeting, he described the disease in
an article titled Encephalitis lethartica. He said patients would get

(03:03):
headaches and malaise, then somnolence. Those initial symptoms could become
chronic and lead to a coma, or a recovery would
eventually happen, or the patient could die. French physician Renee
Cruche also saw patients with similar neurological symptoms, and he
distinguished their condition from previous cases of encephalomyelitis or inflammation

(03:28):
of the brain and spinal cord. Crochet published an article
on the disease around the same time as von Economo
published his. Since the disease was causing mental and behavior changes,
many people did not believe it could be caused by
a virus. At the time, people believed things like trauma
caused mental illness, and the nineteen eighteen flu pandemic, which

(03:51):
ended up killing at least fifty million people, was a
medical crisis that demanded a lot of attention. So many
people weren't convinced by von Economo's proposal at first, but
the encephalitis lethargica epidemic was getting worse. Some patients were
sleeping for months and others were dying of exhaustion. The

(04:12):
disease was spreading to children who were losing impulse control
and becoming violent. The Neurological Institute began funding a lot
of the research of the disease and Stephilitis lethargica cases
reached epidemic proportions in Vienna in nineteen seventeen, then in
France and England in nineteen eighteen. By nineteen nineteen, it

(04:35):
has spread throughout most of Europe, Canada, the US, Central America,
and India. The epidemic peaks in nineteen twenty and nineteen
twenty four and continued into the nineteen thirties. People who
developed parkinston is um required long term care. Researchers attempted
to discover the cause of the disease and find a vaccine,

(04:57):
but no treatment or cure came of that word. When
the drug Levodopa began to be administered to patients with
Parkinson's in the nineteen sixties, it was also given to
some patients with encephalitis lethargica, but treatment wasn't successful. In
the nineteen twenty seven publication Epidemic Encephalitis and Cephalomyelitis, L.

(05:20):
Mcraft said the following, it's dramatic advent on a war
torn world. It's rapid diffusion to all continents and the
islands of the seas. It's striking and characteristic pathological picture.
It's astonishing masquerade in the guise of a myriad of
other diseases. It's remarkable shifts of group types and succeeding

(05:41):
years of its recurrence. And it's almost unfortellable course in
any individual case, has no parallel in the entire field
of medicine. And it is doubtful if any plague has
ever been visited upon humanity that has claimed so many victims,
has so completely covered earth and left so many maimed

(06:02):
and crippled rex in its wake. After nineteen forty, cases
of encephalitis lethargica were only sporadic during the epidemic, the
disease may have killed half a million people and affected
more than a million, though the true number of people
afflicted is unknown, and over diagnosis was likely. Today, exactly

(06:24):
what causes encephalitis lethargica and how it's spread is still
a mystery. It's likely not caused by the flu, which
many people have fought over the years, and it's been
linked to streptococcal infections. Though only symptoms of the disease
can be treated with medicine, there has been some success
with steroids, anti parkinson drugs and electro convulsive therapy, but

(06:50):
because scientists don't know what causes the disease, it's hard
to say whether it will make a comeback or how
to prevent another epidemic. I'm Eve Stepcote and hopefully you
know a little more about history today than you did yesterday.
If you'd like to learn more about the disease and
it's spread in the early nineteen hundreds, listen to the

(07:11):
episode of Stuff you missed in History class called and
Stephalitis letharctica. Get more notes from history on Twitter Instagram
and Facebook at t D I h C Podcast. Thanks
again for listening, and I hope you come back tomorrow
for more delicious morsels of history. Greetings everyone, I'm Eves

(07:39):
and welcome to This Day in History Class, a podcast
that never gets tired of history. The day was April seventeenth,
nineteen fifty one. The Peak District became the first national

(08:00):
park in the UK. Before the nineteenth century, wild and
remote areas in the UK countryside were viewed as untamed
and unsafe, but by the early nineteenth century people have
begun viewing these remote areas more favorably. English poets like
Samuel Taylor, Coleridge and William Wordsworth romanticized the countryside in

(08:21):
their work Yellowstone, the first national park in the United States,
was established in eighteen seventy two. Yellowstone is sometimes considered
the world's first national park, though this is disputed because
there were nationally protected areas in some countries already. Regardless,
more national parks began popping up around the world in
the late eighteen hundreds, such as the Royal National Park

(08:44):
in Australia and Banff National Park in Canada. By the
late nineteenth century, in the UK, people have begun fighting
for the right to roame. A lot of the land
in the UK was privately owned, and over the years
people put forth more demands for access to restricted land.
The freedom to rome is a principle that states that

(09:05):
people have the right to access land for recreation and exercise.
In eighteen eighty four, James Bryce, a member of Parliament,
introduced the first parliamentary bill for public access to the countryside.
The bill failed, but it was reintroduced every year for
the next few decades, only to fail each time. Meanwhile,

(09:25):
public appreciation for natural areas and outdoor recreation was growing
as industrialization spread across England and cities expanded, people began
walking around the countryside. At the end of the eighteen hundreds,
people began forming rambling clubs. In the nineteen o five,
the Federation of Rambling Clubs formed in London. As more

(09:47):
people began to seek access to private land, conflict between
landowners and public interest groups escalated. In nineteen thirty one,
a government inquiry recommended the creation of an authority to
choose area is for designation as national parks, but this
proposal went nowhere. The next year, in an event known
as the kinder Scout mass trespass. Hundreds of people gathered

(10:10):
to protest the fact that people were being denied access
to areas of open country. In nineteen thirty six, a
voluntary Standing Committee on National Parks was formed to advocate
for national parks and lobby the government. The committee was
made up of leisure activity enthusiasts and nature conservationists. World
War Two broke out in nineteen thirty nine, but the

(10:33):
campaign for the creation of national parks continued, and as
the war neared its end. In nineteen forty five, John Dower,
who was Secretary of the Standing Committee on National Parks,
produced a white Paper on National Parks as part of
the Labor Party's planned post war reconstruction. This report led
to Sir Arthur hop Houses Report in ninety seven, which

(10:55):
prepared legislation for the creation of national parks in the UK.
The report also proposed a list of twelve areas to
be designated as national parks. Two years later, the National
Parks and Access to the Countryside Act was passed. On
April seventeenth, nineteen on, the Peak District became the first
area to be designated a National Park in the UK.

(11:19):
The Peak District is an upland area in England at
the southern end of the Pennines. Its highest point is
the Moreland Plateau of kinder scout Land. Throughout the park
is publicly and privately owned. By the end of the
nineteen fifties, several more national parks were established. Unlike national
parks in other countries, the state does not own or

(11:41):
control the land in UK national parks. The national parks
continued to be part of conversations related to the freedom
to rome, conservation and development. The Peak District National Park
has around thirteen million visitors every year. I'm Evesteffcote and
hopefully you know a little more about history today than

(12:01):
you did yesterday. If you'd like to send us a
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h C Podcast. You can also send us a message
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(12:28):
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