Twitter account will provide headlines & quotes from the 1955 Royal Free Hospital outbreak to the day when each headline appeared - 65 years later

That's a really weird mentality. What does this person imagine patients can do about this? The power asymmetry is total. In fact the history of medicine is filled with examples of that, many ongoing. It pretty much defines the history of discriminated diseases, it's what the very field of psychosomatic "medicine" is made of.

And why should patients "compromise" anything anyway? What is there even to make a compromise over? We literally have no power over any of this, nobody ever asks our actual opinion, let alone care when the very narrow questions they chose contradict what they want to do.

Medicine is a strictly supply-side profession, by physicians, for physicians. It just so happens that for the most part it works because, well, science. Science works. Medicine does very poorly when it brushes science aside, like it does with us. And what are patients to do about this? You can't reason people out of a position they didn't reason themselves into and anyway we can't provide any of that reason, that requires science and we're locked out of it by delusional fantasies.

I assume this is based on some assumption that doctors care about outcomes and would not accept creating horrible outcomes. That sure would be nice but is absolutely false and it's precisely this assumption that perpetuates this massive failure. Truth is they don't have to and nothing can force them to.

 

Another, I believe simpler, way, is, on Twitter, to first click on the image so it appears as a pop-up, and then right click on the image and select 'open image in new tab'. In my browser this opens it with a magnifying glass available to click and enlarge it to a readable size.

HTH

 

Thanks. Useful, especially if you don't want to keep a copy.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1327704220242501634

 

I stumbled upon this a few days ago and can't find a good place to put it, not really worth a thread. So as a kind of historical document showing the dysfunctional mess of the history of ME, this is as good a place. Have searched for on the forum but didn't find it posted before.


Battle fatigue

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2002/mar/30/health.lifeandhealth

It turns out that common ground was not found because people who argue in bad faith have different notions of what compromise is. The compromise position was firmly in imagination land, so not really a compromise.

What a mess Wessely and his peers did, but the blame lays on the entire system for having left such a major issue onto the hands of unqualified ideologues. It's impossible to find comparable dysfunction, the level of brokenness is so total. It would take something like the aviation industry still having a significant offshoot of Hindenberg-type zeppelins, with explosive accidents happening on a weekly basis or more, something that is ludicrously impossible.

 

On the audio clip of Melvin Ramsey can anyone determine the name of the condition which he says they thought the earliest cases to be? I can't.

 

It sounded like "abortive poliomyelitis"

https://www.medicinenet.com/abortive_polio/definition.htm

 

It is abortive poliomyelitis.

 

I've read that when a patient was brought into hospital with polio no one ever knew what the outcome would be. It could lead to paralysis of limbs or just weakness, loss of breathing muscles so an iron lung was needed or death. If the patient recovered without obvious disability it was called abortive poliomyelitis.

 

Following up on the abortive poliomyelitis point I have encountered some intriguing aspects.

There seem to be various discrepancies regarding the start of the epidemic. What appears from the twitter thread to be the original case of the American clerical worker would appear to be this

Case 2.-An unmarried female typist, aged 26, with five weeks’ history of bilateral loin pain, radiating toward the groins, lasting for a few minutes at a time, of variable severity, and unrelated to exertion, and three weeks’ history of frequency and dysuria had had her kidneys fully investigated at another hospital, where nothing abnormal was found and she was discharged with a diagnosis of " hysteria". EDITEDTO INCLUDE Three days later, on July 26, 1955, she was admitted to this unit with severe headache, stiffness of her neck, backache, occasional pains in her cervical and left dorsal regions, and weakness of her left hand and wrist.

https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/s0140-6736(56)91234-x
RAMSAY, A. (1956). ENGEPHALOMYELITIS SIMULATING POLIOMYELITIS. The Lancet, 267(6926), 761–764. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(56)91234-x

also reported in
https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/S0033-3506(57)80022-5
Ramsay, A. M. (1957). Encephalomyelitis simulating poliomyelitis. Public Health, 71, 98–112. doi:10.1016/s0033-3506(57)80022-5

What is interesting is that this case was dismissed by another hospital as hysteria, but accepted as part of the Royal Free list. It seems inevitable that there would have been professional jealousies involved from the outset, involving the other hospital and some of its staff. It would be fascinating to know which hospital and see whether any recognised names might have been involved. Presumably a diagnosis of hysteria must have involved the psychiatry department of the hospital as well as the renal one.

 

You are quite right to pick up on the various dates that the outbreak was supposed to have started and I've hinted at that on the account. There will be more examples of this later.

 

Apologies if I am spoiling your narrative. Perhaps I had better shut up.

 

I don't have a problem with you talking about the outbreak.

 

Looking back through the thread it appears hat it would have been Bart's where the patient was diagnosed with hysteria, before admission, or readmission to RFH.

I have often been rather surprised by the tendency for believers in the hysteria hypothesis to snipe anonymously from the deep cover, when it the possibility of writing up their views in the BMJ was available. Perhaps this possibility of a missed diagnosis had a bearing on matters.

 

@AR68 I see you have discussion about PK Thomas and his links to the RFH and Queen Square. That persuaded me to look further and I came across this

He got a first-class degree in anatomy in 1947 and his medical degree in 1950, followed by an MD in 1956. During this time he held a variety of house jobs in London hospitals. In 1957 he became a senior registrar in neurology at the National hospital, Queen Square, starting a long association with that institution
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2008/mar/27/medicalresearch

At the time both Beard and Elliot Slater were at the same establishment, and Walshe would presumably have been the senior neurologist. It's a small world. It is hard to imagine that they did not discuss the RFH cases. Perhaps they were aware of the Barts diagnosis of hysteria being rediagnosed at RFH. One suspects that Slater found himself in a minority, possibly leading to his paper on the Diagnosis of "hysteria" and Walshe's acerbic response.

 

I thought it might be useful to post the link to the original 1956 Lancet article, presumed written by Acheson, suggesting the name benign myalgic encephalomyelitis. This is qute often referred to but rarely seen.

A New Clinical Entity? (1956). The Lancet, 267(6926), 789–790. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(56)91252-1
url to share this paper:
sci-hub.se/10.1016/s0140-6736(56)91252-1

It appears from this that the reference to the RFH outbreak was merely added to onging work emanating probably from the earlier Middlesex cases.

Acheson returned to the subject in 1957 discussing the problems with, and provisional nature, of the name.

ACHESON, E. (1957). BENIGN MYALGIC ENCEPHALOMYELITIS. The Lancet, 269(6973), 834–835. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(57)90999-6
url to share this paper:
sci-hub.se/10.1016/S0140-6736(57)90999-6

Taken together these give a clearer understanding of surrounding events.

It appears to be this paper in which the suggested name was accepted and to which Acheson refers in the 1957 article
Galpine, J. F., & Brady, C. (1957). BENIGN MYALGIC ENCEPHALOMYELITIS. The Lancet, 269(6972), 757–758. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(57)91024-3
url to share this paper:
sci-hub.se/10.1016/S0140-6736(57)91024-3

This refers to an outbreak in Coventry in 1956.

There seems to have been a lot of hysteria around at the time.

edited to insert correct link

 

This would be very useful, Chris, but you've listed A New Clinical Entity? (1956) twice.

 

Thanks Mike. I have edited the post. My minder is out today.

 

@AR68 I thought you might like this paper from the BMJ Epidemic Myalgie Encephalomyelitis (nih.gov) Not for the text which seems a fairly routine 1957 description, but what are we to make of the juxtaposition? The continuation with "subliminal advertising" seems, at best, unfortunate.
Do they think, as some others do, that suggestion and suggestibility plays a part?