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Pseudologica Fantastica and Other Tall Tales: The Contagious Literature of Munchausen Syndrome

1995; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 14; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/lm.1995.0014

1080-6571

Chris Amirault,

Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending

Pseudologica Fantastica and Other Tall Tales: The Contagious Literature of Munchausen Syndrome * Chris Amirault (bio) Limping wildly on his swollen legs, clamoring for pain killers, splattering blood out of his mouth and across his shirt, the Indiana Cyclone burst into the emergency room of the State University of Iowa Hospital on the night of 18 August 1954. 1 Doctors made a spot diagnosis of severe thrombophlebitis, treated him with anticoagulants and the Demerol he had requested, and admitted him to the hospital, where he remained for forty days and forty nights. The Indiana Cyclone had received his nickname during his professional wrestling career, and the beginning of his stay reminded many on the hospital staff of the typical excesses of that brash entertainment. He regaled them with tales of adventure and derring-do, reminiscing about championship showdowns in the squared circle and mano-a-mano battles with his ship’s crew afloat the Pacific. His body provided a source text for many of his stories. As he was examined, doctors found numerous scars, each of which prompted an anecdote about some past medical procedure: an appendectomy aboard a tugboat in Belfast in 1940, surgery for an umbilical hernia in Chicago in 1942, clots removed, wounds closed, veins stripped, kidneys explored. The stories that he told from his scars were initially corroborated by medical tests conducted by hospital staff, and, because the staff lacked medical [End Page 169] records from his stays at other hospitals, his stories received even greater clinical weight than patient narratives usually do. Yet, from the start, the Cyclone’s tales were found to be a bit too extraordinary. While no single anecdote seemed excessive, both the tremendous collection of tales and the raconteur’s clear pleasure in storytelling troubled the hospital staff. Soon, they began to notice other details that raised questions about him. For example, many of them observed that he was extremely well versed in medical terminology. The carefully detailed case report noted that he “had an uncanny knowledge of the location of his own veins” and “was suspiciously familiar with hospital routine.” In addition, though in the midst of an apparently violent physical attack, he had been lucid enough upon his arrival at the emergency room to immediately demand a particular pain killer, Demerol, using medical shorthand to claim that “M.S.,” or morphine sulfate, made him sick. 2 Following another episode, during which he insistently refused certain necessary treatments, several staff members became convinced that he desired hospitalization not to have his physical problem treated but to have other needs met. The staff decided that the Indiana Cyclone was trying to dupe them. For a while, the prevailing if unofficial diagnosis was that he was a drug addict, admitting himself merely to obtain the narcotics he demanded. Attempting to bolster this hypothesis, nurses secretly diluted one of his doses with saline solution, and, as they suspected, shortly after receiving the injection he vehemently protested that he had received a weak shot. However, his apparent drug addiction didn’t account for the most bizarre aspects of the case. The Cyclone always seemed not so much on something as simply on, in the midst of a continual performance, reminiscent of his previous career, in which he was alternately hero, critic, and martyr. 3 Like wrestling bouts, the Cyclone’s performances seemed to rely upon the repetition of set scenes. Every visit from a nurse prompted whining, cajoling, and stubborn refusal. More than once he barged into the offices of baffled staff physicians demanding that they attend to him at once, even though they had never seen him before. He repeated his most sensational routine four times during his stay: flamboyantly insisting that he was ready to return home, he would check himself out against his doctors’ advice, and, upon reaching the front door of the hospital, he would violently cough up clots of blood, terrifying his stunned audience of staff and patients. The scene always ended with shaken nurses convincing him to return to his bed. The climax of his performance occurred after the Cyclone was [End Page 170] released because he had become “intolerable”—and then was readmitted the next day, after a...