sleeping sickness

English

sleeping sickness (usually uncountable, plural sleeping sicknesses)

(pathology) Any of several diseases of which lethargy is a major symptom:
1. especially, African sleeping sickness, an endemic infectious disease of humans and animals in tropical Africa, caused by a parasitic trypanosome, transmitted by the tsetse fly and characterized by fever, severe headache, joint pains and lymph node swelling in the early stages, followed by a neurological phase of extreme weakness, sleepiness, and deep coma leading to death
2. Also, animal trypanosomiasis, also known as nagana or animal African trypanosomiasis
3. eastern equine encephalitis virus, a zoonotic alphavirus and arbovirus present in North, Central and South America and the Caribbean
4. encephalitis lethargica, a form of encephalitis that swept the world in the 1920s

(African sleeping sickness): African trypanosomiasis, negro lethargy (archaic), sleepy distemper (archaic)

infectious disease