“the victims of ME should no longer have to dread the verdict of, ‘All your tests are normal. Therefore there is nothing wrong with you’.” - Melvin Ramsay, 1986.
In July 1955 a nurse and a resident doctor at London’s Royal Free Hospital fell ill with a mystery illness. The illness spread rapidly among the medical staff, particularly the nurses, and within ten days the hospital was forced to close its doors. Over the next few months the illness would strike 287 medical staff, and just 12 patients. Most of those who fell ill were women, but this was to be expected - the hospital had a policy of preferentially hiring women doctors, so most of its medical staff were female.
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Looking back over old medical records, the doctors realised that the outbreak had not been an isolated event. They found records of several patients who had been treated at the hospital in the months leading up to the outbreak, who had the same unusual symptoms. A similar, though smaller outbreak had taken place in Cumbria, in the north-east of England, several months before the Royal Free outbreak. And, at around the same time the mystery illness was ripping through the London hospital, a cluster of similar cases were recorded in Durham, in the north-west.
The doctors searched the scientific literature for further reports of similar illnesses, and they were amazed to discover that similar outbreaks had occurred all over the world, with epidemics recorded in:
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