William McIlroy

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William McIlroy , sometimes also Stewart McIlroy (* 1906 , † 1983 ) was a patient who was known in England and Ireland as a prime example of Munchausen Syndrome . This psychiatric disorder was therefore earlier in England, half-jokingly called McIlroy syndrome .

origin

Much of his life story is in the dark. When asked about his relatives at the hospital, he always stated that they had all been victims of IRA attacks.

"Medical history"

The Irishman McIlroy spent decades in British and Irish hospitals, where he very convincingly acted out various diseases.

McIlroy's "medical history" begins in 1944 when he was treated several times at the City Hospital in Belfast for a poorly healing wound on his left knee . Convicted as a simulant, he was sent to Belfast prison. He then spent the years 1947 to 1952 in a psychiatric institution.

In 1954 he was treated at Charing Cross Hospital in London for an alleged left-sided pneumonia, which he said was the result of a treatment to reduce his shoulder in another teaching hospital in London. Shortly afterwards, severe neurological symptoms appeared (headache, photophobia, neck stiffness, one-sided paralysis), the cause of which eluded all examination methods - which included lumbar punctures (at least 48 in total over the course of his life) and the creation of angiograms . The doctors' assumptions initially ranged from cerebral haemorrhage to syringomyelia and "chronic neuropathy" in the refined stage of his acting skills. However, it cannot be ruled out that he was actually partially insensitive to pain due to a neurological disease. Boreholes in the skull were also discovered in the X-ray.

In 1961 she suffered from hearing loss, swallowing difficulties and acute shortness of breath, which made an emergency operation seem necessary (permanent tracheotomy ).

From 1965 he played acute abdominal complaints, the cause of which the doctors in various hospitals could not trace, despite numerous barium enemas and even laparatomies (he had at least four performed on himself). In the end, numerous scars adorned his stomach (some of which he had inflicted on himself, as on other occasions, e.g. on his leg). The repertoire was later supplemented by increasing complaints in the chest area and from around 1975 acute urine retention - but the old success numbers such as half-sided paralysis, insensitivity to pain in various areas of the body reappeared from time to time.

In 1976 he returned to the starting point of his career when he was admitted to the City Hospital in Belfast for a fracture of the femur (this time not auditioned). Healing went poorly and he eventually underwent hip replacement surgery in London. After a few more short stays in hospital, his trail is lost in 1977. Pallis and Bamji, who investigated the McIlroy case and published it in the British Medical Journal in 1979, assumed he had died, but in 1979 he resumed hospital visits. In 1983 he died in an old people's home.

Pallis and Bamji recorded 207 admissions to at least 68 hospitals under constantly changing names, most often under his own, for the period from 1944 - i.e. over about 34 years, of which McIlroy spent ten in hospital - with ten other cases in which it was very likely also McIlroy. This makes it one of the best-documented cases of Munchausen syndrome (over a long period of time) . The skill and consistency of his approach, which shows a considerable capacity for suffering, is also outstanding: If he was cornered by a clinical picture that the doctors considered implausible, he switched to a new one and left the hospital on his own before a final discovery - so documented in 133 cases by Pallis and Bamji.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ William is the most common given name he uses, Stewart comes second
  2. ↑ Pallis, Bamji British Medical Journal 1979, assumed birth around 1915 in County Donegal .
  3. ^ Time, September 29, 1979
personal data
SURNAME McIlroy, William
ALTERNATIVE NAMES McIlroy, Stewart
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English simulator and permanent patient in hospitals
DATE OF BIRTH 1906
DATE OF DEATH 1983