Medicine: SLEEPING SICKNESS

No one knew how to cure encephalitis lethargica (sleeping sickness) two years ago when Mrs. Jane Norton Grew Morgan, wife of John Pierpont Morgan contracted the disease. She drowsed for eight weeks, then died. Nor do doctors yet know how to cure it. It is one of the small number of diseases, including cancer and rheumatic fever, of which the cause is still obscure, and because the cause remains hidden the proper mode of treatment must of necessity remain haphazard and the cure a matter more of chance than of science.

If doctors had leisure for research, facilities for research, if they had the money that would permit leisure and would give facilities, they would find cures for disease. Rich men have given great sums for the furtherance of medical knowledge. Some have given with the impersonal benevolence of the Rockefellers (Rockefeller Foundation) and of those contributors to the $1,000,000 endowment of the American Society for the Control of Cancer (TIME, Feb. 14 et ante). Others have given put of the ache of personal tragedies. The wife of Lucius N. Littauer, “Gloversville, N. Y., glove maker, died of pneumonia; he gave $5,000 for pneumonia research (TIME, Feb. 15, 1926). Professor Stephen Leacock’s wife died of cancer; he vowed to give over his small wealth and his great talents to finding ways of preventing this disease (TIME, Feb. 1, 1926).

Last week J. P. Morgan became a personal giver. He gave $200,000 for the study and treatment of encephalitis letharaica, the sleeping sickness of which Mrs. Morgan died. The money will equip and support an entire floor of the $1,400,000, 12-story hospital building which the Neurological Institute will build in Manhattan in conjunction with Manhattan’s growing Medical Centre at 165th Street and Broadway.

Encephalitis lethargica is an acute communicable disease, characterized by drowsiness, apathy, and general lethargy. In epidemic form it frequently occurs at times of influenza epidemics. But influenza usually attacks every member of the family, while encephalitis lethargica rarely bothers more than one, even in epidemics. There is no definitely proved relation between the two diseases. Nor is there positive relation between encephalitis lethargica and infantile paralysis, although the infectious agent seems to be the same in both diseases. In fact, doctors do not know the cause. They think infection is spread by secretions from the nose and mouth. Because they are so ignorant in this case, they do not know sure ways of prevention. However, doctors do know this: most people are relatively immune to encephalitis lethargica.

For cancer research, at least, there will be no dearth of facilities and money this year. The American Society for the Control of Cancer practically has its million dollars to spend on public education to prevent cancer. Various other societies haVe their funds. Hospitals have their clinics, supported usually by special endowments. In Manhattan the New York Cancer Institute, financed by the city, cares for impoverished cancer patients and studies the infinite variety of the disease. Last week the New York Cancer Association, headed by Sanders A. Wertheim, occasionally flamboyant coal dealer, announced that, to cooperate still further with the city Cancer Institute, it had bought the 27-story new Hudson Towers building and would fit it up as a $5,000,000 cancer clinic and research laboratory. Most of the 400 beds will be free. In the clinic capable of caring for 500 patients a day, there will be no charge at all to cancer sufferers.