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Chronic fatigue history
Chronic fatigue syndrome does not appear to be a new illness, despite the common believe that it is a modern disease. The earliest record of an illness that resembles CFS has been traced over 200 years ago, back to around 1750. Medical literature of the time described a syndrome called 'febricula', with similar neurological and muscular symptoms as . There were some claims about prominent people like Charles Darwin or Florence Nightingale having a CFS-like illness.
But medical literature didn’t seem to pay much attention to CFS-like illnesses, maybe because of the varied nature and apparent obscurity of the . It was in 1934 that the illness achieved prominence in United States because of a number of a mysterious illness cases characterized by chronic fatigue among staff members of a particular hospital from Los Angeles. Patients, doctors and nurses reported symptoms like muscle weakness, involuntary muscle contractions, twitching and cramps, experiencing extreme pain in the back and extremities for a number of months.
In early winter in 1948 to 1949, an epidemic broke out in Iceland, in the town of Akureyri. Women were affected more than men and the disease appear not to be spread by water or food, but by close contact with affected persons. In 1955, 39 patients of the 1948 epidemic were re-examined: only 25% had completely recovered, 52% had residual muscle tenderness and 65% had objective neurological signs.
An outbreak of a similar disease to that described in Iceland in 1948 was reported in Cumbria, where 233 cases were recorded in a practice population of 1675 people. The illness was thought to be spread by contact and the recovery of patients took months and even years.
In 1955, the Royal Free Hospital in London reported large numbers of people affected by a disease that appeared to be the start of an epidemic. The symptoms consisted in an initial acute infection followed by muscular fatigue and neurological disturbances. The mysterious illness stirred interest and became known as 'the Royal Free disease'. Further suggested the name of myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) as accurate. When medical tests failed to find the cause of the outbreak, many doctors became skeptical about the organic nature of the disease. Psychiatrists in UK said that the illness was due to an episode of mass hysteria and as a result many doctors thought that such an illness was not 'real' and it should not be taken seriously.
Interest in chronic fatigue syndrome was renewed in the mid-1980s when the town of Lake Tahoe, Nevada was stricken by a mysterious disease that caused many people chronic flu-like symptoms. Media interest raised and the disease soon came to be known as the 'Yuppie Flu'. Despite having little evidence on the actual cause of this outbreak, the name chronic Epstein-Barr virus (CEBV) was invented to satisfy demands that the illness be given a legitimate name.
The name "chronic fatigue syndrome" was chosen because it reflects the most common symptom and it was chosen by a group of experts in 1988. When the International Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Study Group updated the case definition, they decided to retain this name until the discovery of a specific cause or marker. | 
