Name: The Family That Couldn't Sleep
Rating: 4.555555555555555 (9 reviews)
ISBN: 9780812972528

D. T. Max

Explores prions, enigmatic brain proteins, and their influence on human life, examining the case of an Italian family victimized for two centuries by a fatal familial insomnia, and the links between prions and various brain maladies.

A Medical Mystery

The Family That Couldn't Sleep

In 1765, doctors in Venice were stumped by the death of a man who suffered from chronic insomnia. Over the next two centuries, this rare, inherited disease continued to baffle the experts as it struck the family at random, passing from generation to generation like a deadly dynastic curse.

Unravelling a Venetian Medical Mystery

The Family that Couldn't Sleep

He has such a great way of explaining the science linked to the narrative so that it doesn’t feel like a peer reviewed info dump. Also love how he had his foot on the pedos neck the whole time

elissa

Daniel T. Max

Terrifying and fascinating history of prion diseases (mad cow, creutzfeld jakob, fatal familial insomnia, etc) that focuses not only on this Italian family who has suffered generation after generation from FFI but the research and people who have been a part of getting closer to figuring out these truly horrifying diseases. Great read and surprisingly riveting for being about proteins.

The Family That Couldn't Sleep A Medical Mystery

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