ABSTRACT
We discussed in a previous paper the biography of Karl Friedrich Hieronymus, Baron von Münchhausen, and the origins of the strange mental disorder which bears his name (Olry, 2002). In short, Karl Friedrich Hieronymus, Baron von Münchhausen (1720–1797) became famous around Hanover as a raconteur of absurdly exaggerated anecdotes of his adventures and exploits as a soldier, hunter and sportsman. Twelve years before the Baron’s death, Rudolph Erich Raspe (1737–1794) published anonymously the first edition of Baron von Münchhausen tales (Raspe, 1785), prefaced by the romantic poet and writer of ballads Gottfried August Bürger (1747–1794). The term Munchausen syndrome—Münchhausen has been corrupted to Munchausen (deletion of the umlaut and one h) in literature and medicine—was coined in 1951 by Richard Asher, a London physician to the Central Middlesex Hospital, and head of the Mental Observation Ward. Munchausen syndrome is characterized by “habitual presentation for hospital treatment of an apparent acute illness, the patient giving a plausible and dramatic history, all of which is false” (Dorland, 2000). Asher, in a paper including three cases of Munchausen syndrome, explained this eponym in these terms: “Here is described a common syndrome which most doctors have seen, but about which little has been written. Like the famous Baron von Münchhausen, the persons affected have always travelled widely; and their stories, like those attributed to him, are both dramatic and untruthful. Accordingly, the syndrome is respectfully dedicated to the baron, and named after him” (Asher, 1951).
