Charles Darwin’s ailments are ‘typical of Lyme disease’ in UK - The Guardian

I did Shorter an injustice. He does say that the difficulty with believing that neurasthenia was an early example of chronic fatigue was that the word was used to describe four different types of condition. One of these was "the male equivalent of hysteria in women".

One of the other uses was "as a diagnosis of fatigue states in patients who were not obviously depressed". It is this last group who are said to correspond to some cases of ME or CFS.

What perhaps makes this interesting is that had Darwin been female his symptoms would no doubt, at the time, and judging by the other cases described, have qualified him for a diagnosis of hysteria and so perhaps neurasthenia would have been the "appropriate" diagnosis. On the basis of an illness corresponding to ME it would not.

It is odd how Wessely, whilst proclaiming a wish to do away with the old disputes as to the nature of ME, should reassert them in his claims concerning the resemblance to neurasthenia.