Synopsis

During the early 1920s, a rare form of encephalitis lethargica swept the world, afflicting hundreds of thousands of people. Of those who survived, many were left in mysteriously frozen, nearly immobile states resembling catatonia, and presently remanded to long term institutions. By 1969, this odd illness--front page news in the 1920s--had been largely forgotten. But a young Dr. Oliver Sacks, coming to work at Beth Abraham, a 'home for incurables' in the Bronx, realized that among the hospital's inmates were eighty survivors of that original epidemic, still frozen in time, decades later. Using the new drug L-dopa, Sacks was able to 'awaken' many of them, but following an initially near-idyllic period, the patients began experiencing ever more tormenting responses to the drug.