(Clinical Practice Series. No. 40.) Edited by Marc D. Feldman and Stuart J. Eisendrath. 229 pp. Washington, D.C., American Psychiatric Press, 1996. $36. ISBN 0-88048-909-X.
From 1783 to 1785, a woman named Kate Hudson plagued England'sNottingham General Hospital with visits prompted by the mysteriousappearance of needles, nails, and pieces of bone beneath herskin. Her medical record, which may be the first recorded accountof factitious disorder, reveals evidence of drug-seeking (laudanum),care-eliciting, and an array of surreptitious self-injuringbehaviors (William Granger, Wonderful Museum, vol. 4. London:Alex. Hogg, 1803). Over the years, other factitious disorderswere periodically described in the medical literature, but therewas no broad interest in the phenomenon until 1951, when RichardAsher, in a flash of whimsy, connected . . . [Full Text of this Article]
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