ABSTRACT
Malingering clearly has existed prior to the current state of the American tort and litigation system. In Europe, a few months after the introduction of the use of ether in surgeries a French surgeon, Jean Baptiste Lucien Baudens, used etherization to distinguish malingering from real disease among two soldiers claiming skeletal problems. In the United States, malingering was common during the Civil War between 1861 and 1865, primarily because of a $300 incentive for new volunteers to sign up for the Union military. By the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, malingering tended to shift from the political arena to the medical field. Between 1880 and 1900, new changes in laws allowed malingerers to take economic advantage, and physicians, especially in developed countries like Germany, began to worry about the outcome of this crisis.
