Reflections on Epidemic Neuromyasthenia (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome)

Abstract

The invitation to speak at this international conference on the chronic fatigue syndrome came as an all but forgotten echo of the past. Epidemic neuromyasthenia-the candidate name which Alexis Shelokov and I proposed for the syndromes we had studied [I ]-was a recurrent preoccupation for us both over a number of years, as I shall relate. There weren't many who shared that interest three decades ago. In fact, a meeting of North American scientists interested in the problem in the late 1950s could be and usually was held in my hotel room. However, my interest had to be put on hold somewhat over one-quarter century ago when the Surgeon General decreed that I should devote my time to coping with smallpox. After 11 years as an eradicator, I returned to the United States and the preoccupations of a dean at Johns Hopkins University. Then, in the mid-1980s, newspaper accounts appeared of a mysterious epidemic on the California-Nevada border. The epidemic sounded suspiciously like those that we had investigated and reviewed. The investigators of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC, Atlanta) alluded to certain other outbreaks with similar characteristics but made no