![]() ![]() In 1969 L-DOPA's cost came down sufficiently that Dr. They were to become know as post-encephalitics. These patients did not have Parkinson's disease proper, but because the encephalitis reduced the neurotransmitter dopamine in the part of their brain known as the substantia nigra they experienced identical, if somewhat more severe symptoms than actual Parkinson's patients. (Not to be confused with the worldwide influenza pandemic of that same year.) Those who survived were able afterwards to lead normal lives for years and sometimes decades until they were stricken with Parkinson's disease-like symptoms: locked and rigid postures that turned them into living statuary (akinesia), hurrying gait (festination), frozen skewed gaze (oculogyyric crises), and so on. These patients were infected in 1918 by the encephalitis lethargica virus, or sleepy sickness. ![]() The crux of the book is the work Sacks began in the mid-1960s with dozens of post-encephalitic patients at Bronx's Beth Abraham hospital, then called the Bronx Home for Incurables and disguised here as Mount Carmel. ![]()
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