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Book Review of Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic That Remains One of Medicine's Greatest Mysteries

Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic That Remains One of Medicine's Greatest Mysteries
reviewed on + 271 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1


This author can make the history of medicine read like a great novel. You can't help but empathize with the patients who are the people she writes about, and their doctors who struggled to help them in light of a brand new, unknown affliction. The symptoms that are manifested AFTER a person recovered from sleeping sickness are incredibly bizarre. To this day, it is not known what caused this epidemic, nor what might cure it.
Truly a forgotten disease, she wrote this book based on her observatitons of her grandmother, who contracted it as a teenager. Thoroughly researched, it is told on a case by case basis. A fascinating, easy read and a great follow up to "American Plague" by the same author.