SYSK Selects: How Munchausen Syndrome Works

Why would someone fake an illness? Here's an even better question: Why would someone repeatedly make themselves sick? Join Josh and Chuck as they separate the facts from fiction and give you the scoop on Munchausen syndrome.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
How do you everybody, it's February first, two thousand eleven.
No it's not. It's modern times. But this is a
throwback to February first, two thousand eleven, when Josh and
I released our episode on Monkhousen syndrome. Very very fascinating
one here everyone, really really interesting condition and very sad
as well. But you should be delighted to learn all

(00:26):
about Monkhausen syndrome today, So I hope you enjoy it.
It's a it's a pretty pretty interesting one, and that's
why I picked it. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to

(00:46):
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
Charles W. Chuck Bryant that makes this stuff you should
know the podcast. I think you didn't know. How's it going.
It's going great. Your nails are shiny. I got my
first manicure last week and I went for the clear
cooat and I didn't notice. I didn't know this about

(01:08):
that's an overcoat. I didn't know this about Chuck. But
he um bites his nail, so he has very shiny,
well trimmed half nail stubs. Yeah, a little bleedy cuticles.
It's like you have some sort of like keratin deficiency
or something. Let's go with that. But it's very shiny,
like the caratin you do have is radioactive or I

(01:30):
could fake like I have a carratin deficiency. Speaking of faking, Chuck,
that's just amazing that you said that word, because we're
going to talk about a syndrome wherein people perfectly healthy,
people at least who start out healthy, fake their own illness.
Bear with me. Yeah, okay, have you seen the movie

(01:51):
The sixth Cents? Have you seen the television show The
O C? No, you've never seen The C I used
to be hooked on that really? Oh yeah? Is that
how you got rid of TV? Yeah? I was like
I can't, it's ruining my life. Um, I can't remember
the girl's name in The o C. But she plays
the girl in the sixth Sense who dies and who

(02:13):
shows up to Haley Joel Osmond's character. Is it Misha Barton,
like the lead girl? Yeah? Yeah, really she was the
little girl in that. Yes, she was that she had
to vomit and remember she was like hanging outside of
his tent and just scaring the tar out of him. Well, yeah,
but she turned out to be okay. She's just a
little upset that her mom was feeding her pines, all right, right,
and she eventually dies. She had videotaped herself. I hope

(02:35):
everyone's seen the sixth sense if you haven't, I'm actually
not really spoiling it. There's a way I could spoil
it way worse than this. But um, she videotapes her
mother poisoning her soup with pine saw and her mom
is outed for having what's called Munchausen's biproxy and that's
a derivative of what's called Munchausen syndrome, right, Munchhausen, that's

(02:58):
another way to put it. Yeah. They also call a
f II. Have you heard of that? Factitious? Close fabricated
or induced illness? Where's the other F or f I?
F I I induced illness? Yeah, my brain didn't function.
But yeah, you were gonna say facetious disorder, which is
what it is. Factitious? I was it factitious? I feel

(03:19):
like a dummy now. I was like, yeah, that's pretty facetious.
I remember when I came across the word facetious. I
I used it in um my everyday vocabulary, or tried
to and um, I but I was reading it in
books here there and never put the two together. So
finally I'm like, what is that word? And I sounded
it out and a facidious, fatidious facetious. I was like,

(03:42):
oh that's facetious. Oh yeah, no, fastidious. Is that what
you were thinking? Okay, it's like facet like the facet
of a diamond. I O U s. And this is fastidious.
I've been reading this wrong. Okay, this is factitious. Factitious. Man,
I'm a dumb We keep this in yeah, I think

(04:02):
so all right, let's do this. Okay. So, um, this
is a Munchausen or is you say? Munkhausen syndrome is
a really mysterious disorder. Um. People imagine it's extremely rare. Um,
but we have no idea how prevalent it is. Because
one of the hallmark characteristics of Munkhausen Munchausen syndrome is

(04:25):
that is dishonesty. Yeah, right, like you don't want to
admit you have it. That's the whole point. No, And
and to define it's it's where somebody who is not
ill either fakes an illness or makes themselves intentionally ill
in order to be able to go seek medical care
and or sympathy and empathy from friends, neighbors, relatives for

(04:46):
you know, having an illness inflicted upon them. Yeah, it's
like fight club ed Norton and Helena Bottom Carter visit
support groups for illnesses to get you know, get attention
and feel a part of a club. I guess right, exactly.
And that's actually there's a new thing called Monkhausen by Internet. Yeah,

(05:07):
that's a big one, And that's like a new deal
where you go online to online support groups and feign
being sick just to feel like you're fitting in. I
guess right. And it's sad. It is sad, but as
we'll figure out, um, Munchausen by Internet is actually kind
of a um. It provides somewhat less harmful sucker to

(05:28):
people who need that. Right, So you're still feeding this
pathological illness. It's not a mental illness, but mentally it's
just as dangerous. Physically, it's not because you're getting what
you want, what you crave, what you need, which is
that attention and that sympathy, but you're not having to
like inject gasoline to get it, and you're not going

(05:50):
to the doctors, and you're not running up insurance premiums
that shouldn't be there and all that bad stuff that
happens with the real Munchhausen. Well, let's talk about the
history of this. Well y one I think was when
it was first described by Richard Asher in the Lancet, Right,
that's when it first got its name. Okay. I read

(06:11):
somewhere that there's like biblical accounts of people like like
basically doing harm to themselves to get attention. Yeah, well,
I know, I don't want to say it makes sense,
but it makes sense that it goes back that long
because what better way if you're very lonely then to
get people to feel sorry for you then to like
jump in a wheelchair all of a sudden or something
a prehistoric wheelchair exactly, or at least a um. Yeah,

(06:34):
So he named it in the Lancet, and he named
it after, of course, Baron von Monkhausen, who was the
eighteenth century German military man who apparently went off to
fight the Russians, the Turks, the Turks and came back
with all these fanciful stories that people thought were largely
probably made up to get attention, right, And there's this

(06:56):
Munchausen Appreciation Society who like actually like the guy and
like the tales. Um, and they've only they've been able
to pin three tales to the actual Baron Munchausen, but they, um,
there's you know, whole books of what he's supposedly these
tales he's supposedly told, and then Terry Gilliam got ahold

(07:17):
of them. Well, of course we'll be remiss without saying
that former Monty Python Alam made that great movie. Did
you see it? Yeah? The Adventures? It was good. It
seems good. I think it was Uma Thurman's first role,
if I'm not mistaken. Was she in it? Yeah? That's
very neat, very young Uma from from the Adventures of
Baron Munchausen too, Super mom my super ex girlfriend? Yeah,

(07:41):
what was the one where she's a mom? Though it
came out even more recently, I don't know she's She's
been in a bit of a talespen lately. We like
him with though uh Uma and Oprah classic bit, we
should probably get back to the serious timber Yes. Um,
we should point out that it is not hypochondria, because

(08:01):
hypochondriacs actually believe that they're sick, and people with Monk
House and disordered. They know they're not sick, they're trying
to pretend that they're sick. Right. Um, there's another, UM,
I don't know if you call it a disorder, there's
another state of mind that someone can be in called malingering,
And that's where you pretend to be sick, either for
financial gain or to get out of work. Like um,

(08:23):
maybe from arrested development when she had the alter ego
who was wheelchair bound and like raised a bunch of
contributions for Yeah, I think everyone's lingered at one point
or another, if it's to get out of work, right,
I guess even just sending an email like, yeah, that's lingering. Yeah.
In fact, the next time I do that, I'm gonna
just put in the subject line malingering and see if

(08:44):
anyone even notices what that means. That's way worse than
um or. It sounds way worse than playing hookey. Yeah,
you malingering. It sounds like you're defrauding somebody. So why
would someone do this? Well, Um, there's a lot of reasons.
The underlying reason, the underlying um part of the disorder

(09:04):
is that it's psychological. They believe, right, it's a part
of a personality disorder. And there's a number of risk
factors that people who have munch House in syndrome tend
to exhibit, like UM, they were they either lost a
parent while they were young, or they were abandoned by
a parents. Another big one, they may have UM had
some sort of prolonged childhood illness is one. UM. They

(09:30):
some are want to be doctors and nurses. Yes they can't.
Maybe couldn't get a job in the medical profession or
never wanted to try hard enough because it's kind of
hard to do that. It's easier to just you know,
hurt yourself, take it before you make it, and then
you've got UM sexual physical, emotional abuse. It's this is

(09:52):
this provides some sort of outlet. It's a really I
guess really the easiest way to understand it is these
people who need to be, who need attention, who need
to be taken care of, who just need more than
they're willing to ask for overtly have found an easy
street between where where they are and where they need

(10:13):
to be as far as attention goes. Well, it's interesting
you say that because they do point out passive aggressive personality,
and a lot of these people if you could just
teach them like, you know, if you need more support
and love, then you should be able to ask for that.
But this is like the ultimate and passive aggressive I think, right,
exactly exactly. Um, So when you're when you're addressing Munchausen syndrome,

(10:36):
you um would usually treat it like you would depression
or anxiety and just kind of approach it from that route.
And I imagine probably as well as using cognitive behavioral
therapy where it's like no, no, don't don't do that anymore,
don't eat that salt, snap the rubber band on your wrist,
remind yourself risk if you're lucky. Um, what else are

(11:00):
we talking about, Chuck? Oh, some more defining characteristics. Usually
people who have munch house and syndrome are young or
middle aged, although there is a record of a guy
who is pretty much a munch House in patient his
whole life. He became famous. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we're
gonna get to him, right, That was at the cherry Yeah.

(11:35):
And then so what do they do? I mean, how
do you how do you feign illness? Well, this is
where it gets really interesting, because it goes anywhere from
just lying, but it's not just a lie, it's he's
usually very specific, like they say that any symptom that
can't be like proven medically is what they'll usually use.

(11:56):
And they always say it's very very specific, like textbooks,
symptom that they clearly read from a book. So they said, hey,
if I say that i'm this, this, and this right,
then I can get this attention. But the problem is
if if you know, these doctors use these same physician
desk references, so they go look up this, this, and this,
and they go, oh, well, it's probably this, so I'm

(12:18):
going to treat it with nitroglycerin. The problem is if
you're faking these three symptoms and the nitroglycerin doesn't have
any effect, that you raise some red flags for your
you know, physician or nurse. Right that that's a big
problem with UM, with um Munchausen syndrome is that eventually
people are going to start to get suspicious, right, and

(12:39):
you're lying too, So it's not like you can just
hide behind your conviction. You're hiding behind a lie, which
I think is is much more stressful. Well, and they'll
go even further. I mean that's just the basic lies told.
People will also physically inflict harm upon themselves everything from h,
well this isn't really harm on yourself, but like heating

(13:00):
up your thermometer, right, tampering with stuff like Henry and
e T. Yeah, he was he clearly had munchausen. Well
he's trying to get out of school though, so he
was really lingering to stay with Yeah, but um, that
is something that they will do. Uh, injecting yourself with toxins,
tainting your urine samples, which you could use anything for that.

(13:22):
I mean, even like a little salt in your urine
will change things. Blood if you put a little blood
in your urine or your stool. Taking medications you shouldn't
be taking, yeah, or just poisoning yourself in any in
any way, shape or form. But apparently injecting is is
fairly common. Um. And then you said also when you
were talking about feigning illness and choosing specific um symptoms,

(13:47):
they may also take a different route and and choose
very broad symptoms like chest paint or um like nausea
or something like that. It could be anything. Yeah, that'll
just tie a doctor up for hours, if not days,
which is what they want is more and attention, Like oh,
you're gonna have to come in tomorrow too. They're probably sweet, right.
And And one of the one of the reasons that

(14:07):
tying a doctor up is just great is because within
those hours, this doctor is going to get more and
more baffled and order more and more tests. And one
of the if the doctors paying attention, he or she
would notice that the munchaus And patient is more than
happy to do this next test, like sure, stick that there,
or maybe even suggested like shouldn't you do this test
and stick that there? Those are two uh characteristics are

(14:30):
two um um symptoms of Munchausen syndrome. Is that you
are very willing, if not eager, to any and every
test that they want to do, whereas most people are
probably you know, like do you have to do that?
Is there another thing to do? Right? Um? And then
extensive knowledge about um tests and procedures and symptoms and

(14:53):
the inner workings of a hospital. Those two things should
be big red flags if you are a physician and
you suspect, you know, you're having kind of troubled dealing
with somebody's symptoms, but not because you're dumb, because you're
trying everything well. Yeah, and inconsistency is one thing to
look for it in your medical history. If they say, well,
you're in here for high blood pressure, you were in

(15:15):
here last year for low blood pressure. So that's a
little weird. Yeah, because I think I would imagine if
you're getting what you need, and especially if it's like
a standard kind of um pathological behavior where it builds
up and up, like remember we talked about kleptomania, Like
the urge just builds up and builds up and until
it becomes irresistible, and afterwards there's just catharsis and then

(15:38):
the guilt or whatever. I don't I didn't see it anywhere,
but if Munchausen syndrome is like that, one would imagine
that you kind of lose touch with your previous lies
and you're not looking at it as a big picture
thing like this for the rest of my life. It's
very like, you know, let's let's do it now and
get this done and get this over with. And maybe

(15:58):
if they actually sat down and saw their metal history sheet,
they'd say, oh, right, need to take this in a
different direction. I UM. I read an account of a
guy who um feigned bereavement. It was called factitious bereavement,
and he showed up at the hospital UM and was
committed for like four weeks because he was um grieving
over the car accident death of his wife seven weeks

(16:21):
earlier and the heart attack death of his mother three
weeks earlier. And then he was interviewed. He was giving
a family history, and three of his fourteen siblings had
died young from things like throat cancer, some other accident
and another thing um. And they started asking this guy
more and more questions, and he wouldn't produce like a
photo of his wife, and he wouldn't let anybody talk

(16:43):
to his family, and they started to get kind of suspicious.
Finally contact and found out who his family was. Contacted
his mother, who was alive, His eleven siblings were all
doing well. He didn't have fourteen and three hadn't died,
and he was never married. And when they confronted him
with this stuff, he just continued to lie and lie
and lie. So there's a pathological bent pathological lying aspect

(17:08):
too Munchausen, which is called pseudological fantastica. Yeah, well, you
brought up an important point. Not letting family be involved.
That's a big tell too. If you. They say, you know,
you should probably bring your husband in and uh, oh no, no, no,
we don't need to involve him, right or or he's dead, yeah, exactly, Yeah,
you don't want to talk to him. He's dead. It's

(17:29):
not funny at all. So that's Munchausen syndrome. UM. There's
a high risk of suicide with Munchausen, probably accidental suicide.
I mean people that go too far by accident, or
they just coming to the end of the road. I
hadn't thought about that. UM, I heard come to the
end of the road. That's terrible. What I mean like that, Um,

(17:50):
thirty to seventy percent is what I saw. But I
don't know. Maybe it would be accidental suicide. Interesting, I
don't even know if there's such a thing. But there's
also all sorts of other myriad problems that arise from
Munchausen syndrome, right, like UM, real illness, Like if you're
a Munchausen suffer happily, you can eventually make yourself like
genuinely ill um from injecting toxic stuff. UM. I read

(18:14):
another account of a guy who was UM, who had
suffered a number of amputations, medical amputations. He was missing,
like pieces of his fingers. He forced, like the doctors
to do it, he would cut himself. He kept a
little knife in a little bag of liquid feces on
him at all times because this thing was to cut

(18:36):
and then smear poop on the cut to make sure
it got infected. Let it faster, go seek medical attention.
And it was far too late and have his limbs amputated,
have his extremities amputated. But apparently the cut and smear
is not He's not the only one doing that. The
cut and smear, that's what I've done that. I was
about to say it has a name, No, I just

(18:57):
made up. Well, that's what I'd call it. Cutting smear. Well,
clearly one of the biggest problems too, is not just
the harm you're doing yourself, but you're tying up doctor's time.
You're you're spending money, if not your money, maybe it's
Medicare or whatever insurance carrier you have. It's very wasteful
and it's taking up time doctors have to treat real
patients when you need to be treated by a mental

(19:20):
health professional is what you need. And a lot of
these guys too. When you're talking about tying up physicians time.
They'll go um at times when there's different staff, lesser staff,
so like weekend nights, holidays, that kind of thing. So
when they tie up because there'll be different people who
haven't met them before and are familiar with them. Um,
So when they're tying up people's time, they're really tying

(19:42):
up their time, you know. No good. So that's traditional
monk housen, which is bad. Yeah, but it gets worse. Yeah,
Mike Housen by proxy. Right, twenty years after the guy
um Richard Asher Dr. Richard Asher um coin the term
one chius in syndrome. Uh, another guy named um Roy

(20:03):
Meadows coined the term Munchausen syndrome by proxy, and that
one is not as recognized, readily recognized as real as
Munchausen syndrome. Yeah, did you run into that recognizes? What
do you mean? Well, I proven, Yeah, scientifically proven. It's

(20:26):
I think the way that I'm seeing it is it's
viewed by some as more like remember the Satanic worshiper
hysteria of the eighties. It kind of falls into line
with that, although this is much more established than that.
Is like the A m A recognizes it that American
Psychological Association recognizes it, but it's still it's easily it's

(20:50):
a lot more easily misconstrued than Munchausen syndrome. Is because
there's another person who's being harmed and because they're usually
chill and right. Well, yeah, this is the deal. It's
usually children, but not always. It's basically your caregiver to somebody,
um and you are maybe poisoning them, you maybe are

(21:10):
smothering them so they developed breathing problems. Uh, there's all
sorts of awful, abusive things that you can do to
bring your child in And that's when I mean you
talk about getting sympathy, is when you run into a
hospital with your baby saying my baby is sick, my
baby is sick, or even worse than dead baby. Yeah,
and that happened sadly all the time. Well, the first

(21:32):
two cases um that that the guy Roy Meadows, Dr
Roy Meadows um described we're. One of them was a
dead kid um, a little fourteen month old Charles whose
mom had been feeding him salt and kept bringing him
back to the hospital and doctors had no idea what
was going on, and eventually he died. The other one

(21:55):
was a little girl, right. Yeah, her name was Kay
and she was six and she was admitted twelve times
for a urinary tract infection, treated with all kinds of
antibiotics and none of them ever worked. And that's obviously
the doctors were like, something's going on here, or at
least Roy Meadow was well. He wrote a study about

(22:16):
both of these cases, called it Munchausen by Proxy and
just basically like changed everything. Yeah, I mean you took
this fairly obscure disease um and turned it into this huge,
almost hysterical entity. Yeah. One of the problems is if

(22:36):
you are suspected of this, at least in the States,
and I think the UK is big on it too.
But if you're suspected of this um, all a physician
has to do is say, uh, you know, called Family
and Children's Services or whatever you call it, county or state,
and say, I think I have a Munchausen m case. Here.

(22:57):
A social worker comes, takes your kid, and then you
go through the hoops to prove that you don't have it. Right,
the burden of proof is on the parent who's been accused. Yeah,
this is a tricky one. We got We'll talk about
this doctor well we can talk about him right now. Southall, Yeah,
Dr David Southall in England, very controversial guy who conducted

(23:18):
some hidden video experiments surveillance in the nineties and UH
in hospitals. So what he would do was he would
videotape these parents inflicting harm on their kids for cases
that they suspected. It was Monkhausen and in the end
he got thirty three of these UH thirty nine suspected
abusers were prosecuted. Twenty three were diagnosed with f I

(23:42):
I And you think, well that's awesome, but it's also
like your videotaping someone doing harm to a kid. It
was very, very controversial, and this guy has been removed
and put back on the UH the list the GMC
General Medical Counsel which means you can practice medicine in England.
He's been on and off of this thing for years
and I think just this year he was finally reinstated again. Right,

(24:05):
They finally said that we're not going to go after
this guy anymore. But tell about the big the documentary. Well,
he accused these um, these parents publicly of UM killing
their two sons based on a TV documentary he saw them. Yeah, well,
the woman was already convicted of killing the sons, and
then he was watching the documentary and said, you know,

(24:26):
I think the husband, Stephen was the guy. And then
that was that, like a huge inquisition was launched and
like this guy's life was turned up on, you know,
upside down. Um, and there are a lot of accusations
like that. I get the feeling from this guy that
he was one of those uh, if you look for it,
you're going to find it kind of guys. Think about

(24:48):
the prevalence in one hospital that he was able to
document thirty thirty three, uh thirty nine total that he
was spying on thirty three prosecutor he was able to
document thirty three k is the Munchausen by proxy? I
mean like that means the prevalence is like probably more
than half of the global population suffers from Munchausen by

(25:10):
proxy in that case, Like, if that's the case, you
know what I mean? Well, I thought these were special
cases he was surveilling. Now I don't know. I don't
think it was just random. Okay, well that would definitely
change the ratio. But still and thanks for that, But
still I don't even know what I meant by that

(26:02):
there are there are people also out there, um, who
question if Munchad's and biproxy does exist. Yeah. Apparently. Um.
There's a lot of accusations that fly at parents of
autistic kids. There's a sub term that's been coined called
Asperger's by by proxy. Yeah. Um. And there's a lot

(26:24):
of autistic parents who are like, oh, yeah, yeah, is
that what you think, not saying my kid is sick,
like ill with physically ill, but my child has Asperger's Yeah,
And the physicians are like, no, your kid doesn't. It's you.
You're doing this too. You're developmentally delaying your kid for
attention or whatever. Again, if it does exist, it you
know clearly the kid needs protection from the parents. This

(26:47):
is the parent almost every time he's doing it. I
think pent of the time it's the mom. But you're
also running the risk of taking a kid away from
you know, perfectly normal parents, right. Um. And apparently the
other big bonu contention is the people who make this
diagnosis almost every time is a pediatrician, not a psychiatrist

(27:11):
or psychologists. All a pediatrician has to do is pick
up the phone and say I think I got a
munch house in case here, get over here, right, get
this kid. Yeah, well it's important. You said, it's a
nine percent in the times by the mother, and that's
that's what is going on most times, that the the
cases are all sort of the same, and that there's
a woman who's the generally responsible for the stay at

(27:33):
home parenting. Maybe the husband is not very involved in
giving them enough attention. In one way to stop that
and its tracts is to make your baby sick. That's
what happened with this one lady may Mary Beth Tinning.
Between seventy two and eighty five, all nine of her
children died and she was very distraught and got lots

(27:54):
and lots of sympathy. Was arrested in eighty six and
it turns out that she had smothered her children, uh
with a pillow. And then they asked a husband and
he said, quote, you have to trust your wife. She
has her things to do, and as long as she
gets them done, you don't ask questions. So that's kind
of the typical case of this uninvolved husband. Clearly uninvolved husband,

(28:15):
that's beyond un involved, that's like apathetic, Yeah, exactly almost,
And that's allegedly apathetic allegedly, and she was convicted UM
for real in eighty seven and sentenced to twenty years.
And that's one of the saddest cases I've ever heard.
There's another one, UM w Nita Hoyt. You know, SID
Sudden infant death syndrome still is a medical mystery. UM.

(28:36):
But there was a time when they thought that it
ran in families, and they were hot on the trail
of explaining sid's as like a genetic uh disorder UH.
And it was based on a woman named Juanita Hoyt
who UM had six children died between nineteen six five
and nineteen seventy one, and her primary physician wrote a

(29:00):
study that kind of made a name for himself as
a career UM as an expert on SIDS based on
this woman's experience and UM in the nineties a I
guess a local prosecutor heard about this story and was
suspicious and started digging around, and it turned out that
this lady had killed her kids, all six of them,

(29:20):
but not only had killed her kids, had also derailed
The investigation of SIDS also raised a lot of questions
of what what does account for SIDS? Is there such
thing as SIDS? Is it all cases of mother's killing
their children. Um, there's there's a lot of questions about
what percentage of mysterious infant deaths are related to you know,

(29:44):
foul play. Well, and that that's just a prime example
of all the ramifications that Monkhausen has not just on
your child, but like diverting the path of medical research. Yeah,
and and not only that the chuck again, we keep
coming back to, you know, a engine being a parent
who lost your kid. You have no idea how right, Um?

(30:05):
And no other people are accusing you of killing your kid. Right? Okay,
So chuck. If the the the idea that Munchausen biproxy
uh does exist, as I said, is endorsed by the
A M A and the A P A. What are
some of the um, what are some of the symptoms
of it by proxy? Yeah. One of the things is

(30:27):
that the symptoms don't match the test results. One thing
is sometimes a caregiver is actually a nurse or works
in the health care industry. Uh, they could be siblings.
The child might have died under weird circumstances. Um, it's
kind of the same as the adult things. There's a mysterious,
unexplained symptoms that aren't going away, uh not, Matt, you know,

(30:51):
bizarre medical history. All these things are red flags. And
there's also UM. It's prevalent in healthcare workers. Remember with
Munchausen syndrome, you wanted to be a healthcare worker. In
Munchausen by proxy, you may be a healthcare worker. Oh
you did? Yeah? Okay, well you so you know, like
the angels of death, like the that's a type of

(31:13):
Munchausen by proxy. Yeah, oh yeah, I guess so. Yeah,
people who like kill the elderly. There's a doctor. I
think that the United Kingdom's most prolific serial killer was
a physician who just like dispatched his patients. He was
like treating them, but really killing him. And he killed
a lot of people. Well, speaking of a lot of things,

(31:37):
we can't close without talking about William You pronounced that,
Michael Hoy. Yeah, he is in the Guinness Book of
World Records actually because he UM had four operations in
a hundred different hospitals to the tune of four million dollars.
But because it's Britain, it's all subsidized healthcare, so that's

(31:59):
a lot of dough go into this one guy and
he didn't have any of these things. He was a
monk howser. Can I say that? I think you can't.
It's not funny because he eventually died. Well, actually he
just died in a retirement home, so it doesn't really
say that he might have died from any of his treatment. Yeah.
I wonder though, Yeah, was he a monk howser cutting smear,

(32:23):
cutting monk howser operations? He was cutting and smear and something. Um,
I've got one for you. That's here. So remember we
talked about Munchausen by Internet. Ah, yeah, so there was
like this. The first description came in the nineties. Obviously,
you can't have Munchausen by Internet. Before the internet was around,
you'd be very far ahead of your time. But very

(32:44):
very quickly, right off the bat, there was a huge
what was first termed by The New York Times as
a hoax. Um. There was a little nineteen year old, spunky,
very positive nineteen year old named Casey Swinton who lived
in Kansas, and she kept um The New York Times
referred to in two thousand one as a weblog right

(33:04):
of her um battle with leukemia, which she lost in
May two thousand one. And she had this huge following
of people who really genuinely cared and were supportive of her,
and we're pulling forward and let her know. Um. And
then in May two thousand one, there they went to
the weblog and found news that Casey had died, and UM,

(33:25):
I don't know who exactly got suspicious, but people started
looking at Casey's mother, who actually turned out to be Casey.
There was no Casey ever. This woman just created this
whole fictitious character too that had leukemia and who died
and received like cards and presents and flowers and condolences

(33:47):
for a kid that never existed. You know, if I
was going to fake something on the internet, I would
fake that I'm awesome, Like I would make it. What
do you think we're doing right now? Well exactly, I
would be like the Walter minist Aisle. I would just
make up these awesome stories about myself. But I mean,
this is a real mental disorder, it's not I'm not
making that you guys should just choose to be awesome

(34:08):
instead of sick. Yeah no, no, I'm not saying no,
I don't think that. I sincerely hope no one took
you like that. May you'd be surprised with these emails.
And then lastly, there I ran across the case of
a double munch housing case, Munchausen and Munchausen by proxy
and the same mother daughter duo. The mother used to
inject her daughter with her daughter's knowledge with bacteria and

(34:31):
had been doing it for so long. The daughter had
both kidneys removed and was on full dialysis, so she
was in on it too. Basically, Yeah, she the mother
had Munchausen by proxy and she just had and the
daughter was both a Munchausen by proxy victim and Munchausen. Yes,
all right, well before you send an emails about the

(34:52):
X files, Yeah, and E R and M and M
sorry mama, three of them here, do your eminem. I'm sorry, mama.
Eminem had a lyric that said, uh, going through public
housing systems, victim of Munchausen syndrome. My whole life, I

(35:13):
was made to believe I was sick when I wasn't.
And it was on the X files they investigated Mounkhausen
by proxy. Yeah, I don't remember that, do you. I
don't remember that either. I was always into the like
the real plot line arc of the whole series was
okay with a smoking man and all that and the
you know, molder sister. I liked how they mixed it

(35:33):
up though, but I liked the just stand alone like
there's a shape shifter in the forest right or um
uh pontsa da Leon's men are still living in Florida
because they discovered the fund because they turned in a
little invisible weirdos. I didn't watch that show at the time,
but the stand alone ones were like Scooby Dooce hint hint.

(35:54):
But I didn't watch that show when it was on
for real at all, and then when it went into
reruns Monday through Friday, I watched it the whole series. Yeah, yeah,
I love those those two. Those movies were pretty good too.
What's it for? Um? This episode on the X Files?
If you want to learn more about it? Type X files?
Where we what's it X files? Munchausen? Yeah, type Munchausen.

(36:19):
You want to spell it for him? Yeah, it's h
m U n c h A U s U s
e n. You want to do it again m U
n c h A U s E N. Yes, And
I would. I would. I should have done a bell
at the first one. Mm hm oh because I missed it. Okay,
you can type that into the search bar at how

(36:39):
stuff works dot com to learn more about this mysterious
and extremely fascinating disease. Um. And until then, let's do
some listener mail. Josh, this is a maybe a weird
listener mail to put at the end of this one.
What are we doing it on this one? This is
a very very special listener and everyone should listen to

(37:01):
this one because it's pretty pretty cool. Dude, are we
going to put a drum rolling at all? I think
we should at some point. Doug lives in North Idaho.
Doug and I were riding back and forth last week
about fishing trout fishing, Okay. I don't remember how it started,
but it started, okay, and I fish for trout here
and there in North Georgia. It's sort of fun. I'm

(37:23):
not like the hugest fisherman, and Doug is an avid
I think fly fisherman. So we're just kinda chit chatting.
And he said that he and his girlfriend Kena, she's
now gotten him or he got her hooked on the show.
And he said, I know you'll never read this, and
Keena's just making fun of me. Right now, And I said,
you tell Kena to shut it. That's not very nice.

(37:43):
And he wrote back and said she's laughing that we're emailing,
and he said shut it. And this is the best
thing ever. And he said, but guys, her birthday is
February two, and uh, I got a plan that I
want to hatch. So right now as you people are listening,
I don't know about right this second, but over the
next day on February two, at some point, Doug is

(38:05):
in his car. He's he's with Kena right now, and
she's probably going, what's going on here? This is weird.
She's she's laughing nervously. She's laughing here, maybe like trying
the door handle to see if it's flocked. But Doug
is actually the one who is nervous, because Doug has
something very important to say, and that is Keena. He

(38:30):
would like you to be his wife. He's asking you
to marry him. Right now. We sort of are, but
we're not marrying you. It's actually Doug and this is uh,
this is the first for us. There's a marriage proposal
right here on the show. Somewhere in Idaho. Keina should

(38:51):
hopefully have a ring on her finger at this point,
don't you think, what do we do if with the
answer is no? I guess we'll hear from Doug. We
won't break the people, though. I think we should go
ahead on the premise that she says yes, all right,
so I mean, what else can we say? I can't
believe we just said that. Yeah, Doug the trout fisherman
is marrying Keena, and congratulations mozeltof again. Right, yeah, it's funny.

(39:15):
Where do we go from here? I don't know. It's
like we should probably just like fade out with us wondering.
I guess, so send us an email, right yeah. Stuff
podcast how stuff works dot com holy Cow. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
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(39:36):
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