Twitter account will provide headlines & quotes from the 1955 Royal Free Hospital outbreak to the day when each headline appeared - 65 years later

There is something odd about the publishing history of the three M and B papers. The third paper is clearly necessary in order to make any sort of evaluation of the first two. There seems to be little difference in their readiness for publication. However the first two papers were published on 3 January 1970. The third was published in 1973 having not been received by the journal until 3 November 1971. There is thus a two year gap between the papers being submitted for publication. There is then a gap of over a year before publication.

It could be that it was previously submitted to other journals and refused and that thorough peer review delayed publication further. (I was being sarcastic about the peer review). This seems like obfuscation.

EDIT this needs to be compared with the Imboden Canter Cluff hatchet -job on chronic brucellosis in 1959 with various papers dealing with different aspects of the research. There was no huge gap between publication. It might reasonably be thought that if the third paper was submitted to the BMJ they would have had a duty to publish.

EDIT if the third paper was not of sufficient intellectual or scientific rigour to be deemed worthy of publication, why would one consider papers based on it to be of such a standard?

Edit typos. I am blind to rereading.
 
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Apologies if this seems off topic, but, whilst we await further informative tweets, I came across fascinating background reading whilst researching that strange article by Alfred Friendly which told us something important but is not clear exactly what. McE hardly makes much of the Chestnut Lodge Hospital episode-only mentioning it in a list of other epidemics. There was no analysis of it. How and why did Friendly pick up on it? It must have been an issue of special interest to him. One wonders whether "to have a Friendly word with someone" could have other connotations.

From the beginning, some believed that the real significance of the case was the prospect that a court would settle the long-running battle between the biological and psychoanalytic schools of psychiatry. "Everyone thought, 'Holy mackerel, the outcome of this case is going to establish the standard of care,' " says Alfred L. Scanlan Jr., a Baltimore lawyer who represented Chestnut Lodge. But nothing is ever quite that simple, especially when it comes to a field as inexact and emotionally charged as psychiatry.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...m_term=.dc9205fd65b7&itid=lk_inline_manual_19

There is also this WP article about a patient https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...035848-4668-11e9-aaf8-4512a6fe3439_story.html

Reading Shelokov's paper https://doi.org/10.1056/nejm195708222570801 gives one no indication of the nature of the institution where the outbreak occurred. There seems a great irony in Friendly's oh-so-hasty endorsement of the hysteria explanation in such an institution.

Perhaps US members are familiar with all this. It will be a surprise to most UK ones.
 
It is interesting that apparently a Registrar Psychiatrist was able to diagnose hyperventilation due to anxiety in patients he had never examined when a team including infectious diseases consultants was unable to do so over a number of weeks. Here is a passage from Alexis Shelokov's NIH personal history.

Now, this is a funny one. The United States Navy assigned me a doctor. They were rotating them through my service at that time. I remember his name: Gordon Wallace. Gordie. It’s during the polio season, during a polio epidemic. The telephone rings, and he says, “It’s Gordie. Come down to the emergency admission room. I want to show you something.” I come down, and there’s this lovely young girl, probably in her late teens, and a young man. He’s trembling -- his lip is trembling -- and he’s like this…And she’s lying on the gurney, like this. Have you ever seen that? Stiff as a board, her toes are turned in, her hands are like that, and this is called [Coucherer’s [??]] spasm. So I came in -- diagnostically, we immediately know what it is, and he needed to know. He said, “Before anything happens, I want you to see it.” I said, “Yes, I see what you mean.” And the boyfriend said, “Please, save her! She’s dying! She’s dying!” Gordie says, “Just relax, just relax.” He says, “Nurse, get me a brown bag.” She brings him the brown bag, he crumples it up, puts it on her mouth, and says, “Breathe. Breathe deeply.” So she breathes deeply and after a while… If you have a good sense of humor and you remember your Bible, your New Testament, Gordie then says, “Woman, get off your bed and walk.” She says, “I can’t!” “Yes, you can.” The girl sits up, stands up, walks, and the boyfriend says, “It’s a miracle! It’s a miracle!” Of course, you know what it was? We’ll look into it later -- he made the diagnosis. Hyperventilation.https://history.nih.gov/display/history/Shelokov,+Alexis+2005

This must have been some time in the 1940's. He wasn't too strong on dates. So it was known and immediately recognised. Strange that. Especially as they didn't have a registrar psychiatrist to advise them.

 
For anyone struggling to understand what Brian Inglis (editor of the Spectator and TV producer) was on about in his letter this part of a review of his book The Hidden Power: science, scepticism and psi (taken from Amazon) might assist. Or might not.

In this fascinating and remarkably clear study of attitudes, Inglis is concerned principally with the massive accumulation of evidence - historical, anecdotal and experimental - for the existence of action and communication at a distance of a kind which does not fit materialistic preconceptions. The force, all forces involved - for convenience labeled psi - can be observed in operation, at all biological levels, in the behaviour of plants, insects, animals and people, and Inglis has collected a striking body of evidence to illustrate the fact. He also examines how the force has been demonstrated in recent times - to the satisfaction of eminent quantum physicists.
 
That information that the RFH was only closed to new admissions , out-patients remaining open, scuppers my suggestion above about comparative rate of infection of staff and out patients. The figures for out-patients must be for the whole period of the epidemic. However comparison with the current epidemic might be useful. What percentage of those infected with covid have received in-patient treatment? Indeed what percentage of us initially received in-patient treatment?

I am still pursuing that interesting little spat between Alfred Friendly and the Washington Post and Shelokov over Chestnut Lodge. There is clearly more to that than meets the eye. I was idly speculating on what there could possibly be that was interesting about a highly secretive mental hospital, with high security, conveniently situated for DC and Langley and with Frederick only a half hour drive away, or less, up 270. I was at least partly correct.

Amusingly it seems that Allen Dulles and Richard Helms both had regular sessions with the same therapist, which they only discovered due to a mix-up over appointments. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP91-00901R000500110034-7.pdf
The establishment would also have been of significance to Friendly as a result of Philip Graham's association with the place. He was publisher and co-owner of the WP and committed suicide in 1963 when on temporary release.

It scrambles the brain just trying to imagine the level of security clearance necessary to have the CIA director and his deputy undergoing therapy on the premises. One does wonder whether all work of a certain sort was "off shored" to McGill
 
Apologies, I keep going back to that Washington Post syndicated article by Alfred Friendly. There is a highly intriguing aspect to his emphasising of the links between the RFH and Chestnut Lodge outbreaks. Chestnut Lodge was a private mental hospital stuffed full of leading psychiatrists. It was used by the CIA staff, if not for experiment. Apart from Dulles and Helms, Frank Olson was booked in to see Dr Robert W Gibson, who was president of the APA 1976-77 and secretary 1972 -75, on the day after he was suicided in November 1953.

This was a hospital based on Freudian ideas and having a psychotherapy culture. Although some of the binding of patients in wet sheets appears, to the uninformed viewer, somewhat strange. If they could not identify hysteria when they encountered it what is the point of psychiatry? Instead they called in the investigators from NIAID.

What was Beard thinking of? Or does his obituary make that clear.

The epidemic occurred in July and September 1973 and investigation seems to have taken some time.

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/C Disk/CIA Olson Frank/Item%
 
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