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Rev Neurol (Paris)
; 178(9): 878-885, 2022 Nov.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-35568513
ABSTRACT
A pandemic of what came to be known as encephalitis lethargica spread starting in the winter of 1916-1917 and continued into the 1930s. Neurological after-effects, namely permanent parkinsonian syndromes and various abnormal movements, permanently disabled the survivors of the one or two million victims, often children or young adults. Among them, a small proportion developed a symptom that was little known up to that point and that is currently exceptional: oculogyric crises; that is, a lateralised, dystonic upward movement of the eyes known as a tonic eye fit. This paper proposes a history of the recognition of this symptom, its inclusion in the neurological nosography, and the pathophysiological hypotheses postulated a century ago.