Is the ‘Sleepy Sickness’ described in ‘The Sandman’ real?

Warning: The following article contains spoilers from The Sandman

Just like the rest of the DC Universe from which The Sandman keeps a wary distance, the recently released Netflix series is pure fiction… or so you thought. The first episode of the series starts with the greedy Roderick Burgess trapping Dream, the Lord of Dreams — also “Morpheus” or “Sandman” — and trying to cajole the entity into fulfilling his wishes. But his efforts are in vain as Dream refuses to talk and is thus left in his unescapable cage for the next hundred years. This in turn triggers the widespread and incurable ‘Sleepy Sickness’ and all you need is to rifle through the pages of history to realize that the epidemic the series depicts is not so fictional after all.

Spoilers ahead.

What is the “Sleepy Sickness” in The Sandman?

As Dream remains imprisoned for over a century, powerless and unable to reach his magical tools — the ruby, his helm, and his pouch of sand — over a million people all over the world become the victim of the epidemic, which is dubbed the ‘Sleepy Sickness” or the ‘Sleeping Sickness.’ This “disease” manifests itself in two ways — either an individual is unable to wake up, lost in the land of dreams or they sleep-walk for the rest of their life. 

No one ever recovers from the disease, at least not until Dream was still trapped in Burgess’ glass cage. In the hundred years of his imprisonment, almost everyone who lives with the sickness dies in their sleep, never waking up, all except a woman named Unity Kincaid. She is a young school girl when she gets stuck in her unnaturally deep slumber miraculously — as the reason for her survival is rather unexpected — is still breathing when Dream escapes his prison. Thus, she wakes up and comes to be known as the sole survivor of the Sleepy Sickness. 

While the existence of Dream and his fantastical realm is dipped in the rich imagination of Neil Gaiman, the seemingly fictional Sleepy Sickness is based on a very real event that remains one of the biggest question marks in medical history. 

The Sandman’s “Sleepy Sickness” depicts a very real epidemic

In the series, the sickness takes over the world without any warning as mere mortals are not aware that the Lord of Dreams has been imprisoned. In the real world too, when the epidemic — known as encephalitis lethargica — suddenly strikes Vienna sometime in 1916, and while researchers, physicians, and neurologists strive to find its cause, it continues spreading across the world. 

While no one knows the actual number of people the disease infected, it is estimated that over a million were infected with the Sleepy Sickness while close to 500,000 succumbed to its incurable symptoms. 

Per a 2017 article published in Oxford Academia, the detectable symptoms include acute lethargy that keeps the patients in a sleep-like state, high fever, catatonia, double vision, delirium, etc, which often progresses to coma and in many cases, death. A myriad of drugs were tried in an attempt to cure the infected, and while some did improve, it was a temporary solution as their condition soon deteriorated again. 

Many have theorized that the disease was an offshoot of the influenza pandemic that took place in 1918, but there were never any concrete results to explain what caused the epidemic, what caused the unexpected side effects in many survivors — like losing the ability to move muscles and long-term damage to the central nervous system — or what lead to its abrupt conclusion in 1927. Since the widespread epidemic, only occasional cases of suspected encephalitis lethargica have been detected, and even the causes of these more recent cases have never been determined.

As for the epidemic’s depiction in The Sandman, Gaiman doesn’t go for a completely accurate adaptation. For starters, unlike the one hundred years the epidemic lasts for in the series, in reality, encephalitis lethargica appeared out of the blue in 1916 — the same year Dream is captured in The Sandman — spread worldwide at a rapid pace over the next few years, and mysteriously started disappearing in 1927. 

Also, there were many who survived the ‘Sleepy Sickness,’ though the majority of them went on to suffer from debilitating neurological disorders or psychiatric issues. In The Sandman, Unity is the only survivor, but suffers no such side effects even though she is over the age of 100 when she wakes up. 

But the biggest way The Sandman deviates from the real trajectory of the epidemic is that it provides a reason, albeit fictional, to explain what caused the epidemic — the powerless Dream in prison and his realm, the Dreaming, reduced to shambles. In real life, the cause of the Sleepy Sickness remains a mystery to this day

The Sandman is currently streaming on Netflix.