ABSTRACT
Factitious or fraudulent fever is diagnosed when the patient has induced his fever by self-infection, by manipulation of the thermometer to produce a falsely high reading, or by tampering with the hospital temperature chart. Patient may have had psychogenic hyperthermia — unexplained low-grade fever associated with a hysterical personality disorder. Most of the cases of fever of undetermined origin are eventually found to represent atypical manifestations of common diseases, rather than exotic illnesses. An investigation by M. K. Hasan and A. C. White in 1979 attempted to verify the presence of psychogenic fever by establishing its “actual incidence” in a psychiatric population at a university hospital unit dealing mainly with patients suffering from psychoneurosis. Munchausen Syndrome is a complex character disorder, many facets of which might be displayed in patients exhibiting factitious fever. Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome was first described and named by J. Delay and P. Deniker in 1968. They thought that the syndrome appears due to phenothiazine therapy.
