Chronic fatigue syndrome

Writing on the competing narratives of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), Dr Alastair Miller notes that he has ‘… been involved in the diagnosis and management of this condition since the mid-1980s …’ (Miller, 2024). Yet, despite his long involvement, Miller perpetuates an inaccurate account of the documented origins of ME/CFS, noting: ‘Indeed, the original description of ME at the Royal Free hospital in 1955 was attributed to mass hysteria’ (Miller, 2024). This sentence, so freighted with ambiguity, invites the inference that The Medical Staff of the Royal Free Hospital (1957) attributed ME to mass hysteria in their original report. They did no such thing.

Rather, their report describes an outbreak that affected the lymphatic, muscular, and nervous systems. But 15 years were to elapse before two psychiatrists, McEvedy and Beard (1970), wrote: ‘The occurrence of a mass hysterical reaction shows not that the population is psychologically abnormal but merely that it is socially segregated and consists predominantly of young females.’