Skeptics in the Pub: Fashionable diseases

On Monday 14th December Cees Renckens will talk to us about the past and present of fashionable disorders.

Epidemics of diseases, caused by contagious micro-organisms, are well-known to everybody and their increasing rarity is one of the success-stories of modern medicine, the result of vaccinations and antibiotics. A similar success cannot be claimed on the struggle against the contagiousness and persistence of psychosomatic disorders and syndromes. Dating back some centuries ago as already described in Adair’s book Essays on Fashionable Disorders (1790) and with as a prototype the epidemic of hysteria, launched by the father of neurology Charcot in Paris around 1880, new epidemics of this nature (severe suffering but no objective findings) have been on the market since.

In more recent years we have seen ‘chronic whiplash’, ‘chromic Lyme’, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome and pelvic instability, to mention a few. We shall describe the common characteristics of these syndromes and will present our speculation on why they occur and how they sometimes disappear.

Cees Renckens is retired gynecologist and former president of the Dutch society against Quackery.

For more info on the Dutch society against Quackery: http://www.kwakzalverij.nl/1235/A_Brief_History_of_the_Vereniging_tegen_de_Kwakzalverij_

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There is a possibility to have diner before the meetup. Please indicate that you are part of the meetup and show your support. Thx :-)