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Excerpt from www.madinamerica.com
In 1957, John Chapman published an article to the American Journal of Medicine titled “Peregrinating Problem Patients—Munchausen’s Syndrome”. The article describes his hospital’s frustration in dealing with a patient who he calls a “professional hospital bum”. The patient readmitted numerous times to the same hospital, suffering from an idiopathic bleeding disorder; however, upon further inspection, the hospital came to believe that his bleeding disorder was partially self-inflicted and partially fabricated. The man continued to plead for help and berated the doctors when they could not do anything more for him.
When I read this paper, I was struck by the animosity with which the patient is presented. He is continually insulted and demeaned. One physician describes him as “obese, obtuse, obstinate, obstreperous, and obscene”. I was particularly taken aback by the passage which concludes the paper:
