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 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
Charles W. Chuck Bryant that makes this stuff you should

(00:22):
know the podcast. Like you didn't know, how's it going?
It's going great. Your nails are still shiny. I got
my first manicure last week and I went for the
clear cooat and I didn't know. I didn't know this
about Now that's an overcoat. I didn't know this about Chuck.
But he um bites his nail, so he has very shiny,

(00:45):
well trimmed half nail stubs. Yeah, a little bleedy cuticles.
It's like you have some sort of like carratin deficiency
or something. Let's go with that. But it's very shiny,
like the carratin you do have is radioactive or I
could fake, like I have a charrotin deficiency. Speaking of faking, Chuck,
that's just amazing that you said that word, because we're

(01:08):
going to talk about a syndrome wherein people perfectly healthy people,
at least you start out healthy, fake their own illness
bear with me? Yeah. Have you seen the movie The
Sixth Sense? Have you seen the television show The O C? No,
you've never seen The C. I used to be hooked

(01:31):
on that really. Oh yeah, is that how you got
rid of TV? Yea, it was. 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 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

(01:51):
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 a little upset that her mom was
feeding her pines, all right, right, and she eventually dies.
She had videotaped herself. I hope 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.

(02:13):
But um, she videotapes her mother poisoning her soup with
pine salt, 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 another way to put it. Yeah,
they also call it a f II. Have you heard
that factitious? Clothes fabricated or induced illness? Where's the other

(02:38):
F or f I? F I induced illness? Yeah, my
brain didn't function. But yeah, you're gonna say facetious disorder,
which is what it is, factitious factitious. I feel like
a dummy. No. 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

(02:59):
to and um 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 fastidious, fastidious, facetious. I was like, oh that's facetious.
Oh yeah, no, fastidious Is that what you were thinking?
It's like facet like the facet of a diamond. I

(03:21):
O U S. And this is fastidious. I've been reading
this wrong. Okay, this is factitious factitious. Dummy. We keep
this in Yeah, I think, so okay, all right, let's
do this. Okay. So um, this is like munchaus In orders.
You say, munkh Housen syndrome is a really mysterious disorder. Um.

(03:44):
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 that it is dishonesty. Yeah, right,
like you don't want to admit you have it. That's
the who point, no, and and to define it's it's
where somebody who is not ill either fakes an illness

(04:06):
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 you know, having an illness
inflicted upon them. Yeah, it's like fight Club at Norton
and Helena Bottom Carter visit support groups for illnesses to

(04:28):
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, that's a
big one. And that's like a new deal where you
go online to online support groups and fainn being sick
just to feel like you're fitting in. I guess right,
And it is said, but as we'll figure out, UMM,

(04:49):
Munchausen by internet is actually kind of a um. It
provides somewhat less harmful sucker to people who need that. Right,
So you're still feeding this pathological illness. It's not ill,
but mentally it's just as dangerous. Physically, it's not because

(05:10):
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 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 Monchhausen. Well, let's talk
about the history of this. Well, one I think was

(05:33):
when it was first described by Richard Asher in the Lancet, Right,
that's when it first got its name. Okay, I read
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

(05:56):
get people to feel sorry for you, then to like
jump in a wheelchair all the sudden nurse a prehistoric
wheelchair exactly, or at least they um. Yeah, So he
named it in the Lancet, and he named it after,
of course, Baron von Mounkhausen, who was the eighteenth century
German military man who apparently went off to fight the Russians,

(06:18):
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 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,

(06:42):
whole books of what he supposedly these tales he's supposedly told,
and then Terry Gilliam got ahold of them. Well, yeah,
of course will be remiss without saying that former Monty
python Alam made that great movie. Did you see it? Yeah?
The Adventures? It seems good. I think it was Uma
Thurman's first role. If I'm not mistaken, was she in it? Yeah,

(07:03):
that's very neat, very young Uma from from the Adventures
of Baron Munchhaus into Super Mom my super ex girlfriend. Yeah,
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

(07:26):
should probably get back to the serious timber. Yes. Um,
we should point out that it is not hypochondria, because
hypochondriacs actually believe that they're sick, and people with Monkhousen
disordered they know they're not sick. They're trying to pretend
that they're sick. 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

(07:48):
where you're pretending to be sick, either for financial gain
or to get out of work. Like um, maybe from
Arrested Development when she had the alter ego who was
wheelchair bound and like raised a bunch of kind Derbut
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.

(08:10):
In fact, the next time I do that, I'm gonna
just put in the subject line malingering and see if
anyone even notices what that means. That's way worse than
um or it sounds way worse than playing hookey. Yeah,
you know, 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

(08:33):
the disorder 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.

(08:59):
They 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

(09:22):
this is 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

(09:43):
they need to be as far as attention goes. Well,
it's interesting you say that because they do point out
passive aggressive personality and 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 aggress I I think,
right exactly exactly. Um So when you're when you're addressing

(10:04):
Munchausen syndrome, you um would usually treat it like you
would depression or anxiety and just kind of approach it
from that round, 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 wrist if you're lucky. Um,

(10:29):
what else are 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. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
we're gonna get to him. Right. That was, And then

(10:50):
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 it's usually very specific,
like they say that any symptom that can't be like
proven medically is what they'll usually use. And they always

(11:11):
say it's very very specific, like textbook symptom that they
clearly read from a book. So they said, hey, if
I say that on 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 going

(11:33):
to treat it with nitroglycering. The problem is if you're
faking these three symptoms and the nitroglycerin doesn't have any effect,
that you raised some red flags for your you know,
physician or nerve. That's a big problem with UM, with
UM Munchausen syndrome is that eventually people are going to
start to get suspicious, right, and you're lying too, So

(11:55):
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 uh, well this
is really harm on yourself, but like heating up your thermometer, right,

(12:16):
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 can use anything for that, I mean, even

(12:37):
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
feeding illness and choosing specific um symptoms, they may also

(13:02):
take a different route. And and she's very broad symptoms
like chest paint or um like nausea or something like
that could be anything. Yeah, that'll just tie a doctor
up for hours, if not days, which is what they
want is more and more attention. It's 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
tying a doctor up is just great is because within

(13:24):
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 here, 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

(13:45):
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

(14:08):
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 in your medical history. If they say, well,
you're in here for high blood pressure, you were in

(14:30):
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 cleptomania, Like
the urge just builds up and builds up and until
it becomes irresistible, and afterwards it was just catharsis and

(14:52):
then 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 if they actually sat down and saw their medical

(15:15):
history sheet, they'd say, 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

(15:36):
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,
another thing, UM. And they started asking this guy more
and more questions, and he wouldn't produce like a photo

(15:56):
of his wife, and he wouldn't let anybody talk 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

(16:16):
and lie. So that there's a pathological bent pathological lying
aspect to Munchausen, which is called pseudological fantastica. I don't Yeah, well,
you brought up an important point, not letting family be involved.
That's a big tell too. If you say, you know,
you should probably bring your husband in and uh, oh no, no, no,

(16:37):
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 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

(16:58):
they just coming to the end of the road. I
hadn't thought about that. Um, I heard come of the
end of the road. That's terrible. What I mean, like
that um 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 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

(17:20):
a Munchausen suffer happily, you can eventually make yourself like
genuinely ill um from injecting toxic stuff. UM. I read
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

(17:42):
to do it. He would cut himself. He kept a
little knife and a little bag of liquid feces on
him at all times because this thing was to cut
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 blombs amputated,
have his extremities amputated. But apparently the cut and smear

(18:06):
is not He's not the only one doing that. The
cut and smear, that's what I've dubbed it. Save it
as a name, No I just made up. Okay, well
that's what I'd call it. Cutt and 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

(18:29):
and it's taking up time doctors have to treat real
patients when you need to be treated by a mental
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
staffs to like weekend night holidays, that kind of thing.
So when they tie up because there'll be different people

(18:51):
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
up their time. You know. No good. So that traditional
Munchausen which is bad, yeah, but it gets worse, Yeah,
Housen by proxy. Right. Twenty years after the guy Um,
Richard Asher Dr Richard Asher Um coined the term Munchausen syndrome.

(19:15):
Another guy named um Roy 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've proven, yeah,

(19:39):
scientifically proven. It's 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 that,
the American Psychological Association recognized is it, but it's still

(20:03):
it's easily it's a lot more easily misconstrued than mun
childs and syndrome is because there's another person who's being harmed. Yeah,
and because they're usually children, right, Well, yeah, this is
the deal. It's usually children, but not always. It's basically,
you're a caregiver to somebody, um, and you are maybe
poisoning them, you maybe are smothering them so they develop

(20:27):
breathing problems. Uh, there's all sorts of awful abuse of
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 happens sadly
all the time. Well, the first two cases um that

(20:49):
that the guy Roy Meadows, Dr Roy Meadows um described
where one of them was a dead kid um, a
little fourteen the 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 moment was a little girl, right, Yeah,

(21:12):
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 he wrote
a study about both of these cases, called it Munchausen Byproxy,

(21:33):
and just basically like changed everything. I mean, he took
this fairly obscure disease um and turned it into this huge,
almost hysterical entity. Yeah. One of the problems is if
you are suspected of this, at least in the States,

(21:55):
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 munch housing case. Here,
a social worker comes, takes your kid, and then you
go through the hoops to prove that you don't have

(22:16):
it right. The burden of proof is on the parent
who's been accused. This is a tricky one we got
we'll talk about this doctor. Well, we can talk about
them right now. Southall, Yeah. Dr David Southall in England,
very controversial guy who conducted some hidden video experiments surveillance
in the nineties and UH in hospitals. So what he

(22:40):
would do was he would videotape these parents inflicting harm
on their kids for cases that they suspected it was
Muckhausen And in the end you got thirty three of
these uh, thirty nine suspected abusers were prosecuted, twenty three
were diagnosed with f I I And you think, well
that's awesome, but it's also like your videotaping someone doing

(23:03):
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, they finally
said that we're not going to go after this guy anymore.

(23:23):
But t all 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,
I think the husband, Stephen was the guy. And then

(23:45):
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
the prevalence in one hospital that he was able to
document thirty three uh thirty nine total that he was

(24:10):
spying on thirty three prosecutor he was able to document
thirty three cases of Munchausen biproxy. I mean, like that
means the prevalence is, like probably more than half of
the global population suffers from Munchausen by 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. No,

(24:31):
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 even though what I meant
by that, So if there are there are people also
out there, um who questioned if Munchausen biproxy does exist, Yeah, apparently. Um.

(24:54):
There's a lot of accusations that fly at parents of
autistic kids. There's an sub term that's been coined called
Asperger's by by proxy. Yeah. Um, And there's a lot
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,

(25:16):
And the physicians are like, no, your kid doesn't. It's you.
You're doing this too, and 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 is the parent almost every time is doing it.
I think percent of the time it's the mom. But
you're also running the risk of taking a kid away

(25:39):
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 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, get

(26:00):
this kid. Yeah, well it's important you said. It's a
nine apercent at the time as 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 home parenting. Maybe the husband is not very involved
in giving them enough attention. In one way to stop

(26:22):
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
and lots of sympathy. Was arrested in eighty six and
it turns out that she had smothered her children with

(26:43):
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, that's beyond
un involved, that's like, yeah after athetic, yeah, exactly almost,
And that's allegedly apathetic. And she was convicted, um for

(27:06):
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 Nita Hoyt. You know, SID Sudden infant
death syndrome still is a medical mystery, UM, but there
was a time when they thought that it ran in families,
and they were hot on the trail of explaining SIDS
as like a genetic uh disorder UH. And it was

(27:31):
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 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

(27:54):
heard about this story and was suspicious and started digging around.
And it turned out that this lay he had killed
her kids, all six of them, but not only had
killed their 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 mothers killing their children? Um, there's

(28:19):
there's a lot of questions about what percentage of mysterious
infant deaths are related to you know, 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.

(28:42):
You know, imagine being a parent who lost your kid.
You have no idea, how right, um, and now other
people are accusing you of killing your kids. 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

(29:03):
um what are some of the symptoms of it by proxy? Yeah.
One of the things is that the symptoms don't match
the test results. One thing is sometimes a caregiver is
actually a nurse or works in the healthcare industry. Uh,
they could be siblings. The child might have died under

(29:23):
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, 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

(29:44):
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 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

(30:05):
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, we can't close without talking about
William You pronounced that, Michael Hoy. Yeah, he is in

(30:27):
the Guinness Book of World Records actually because he um
had four operations and a hundred different hospitals to the
tune of four million dollars. But because it's Britain, it's
all subsidized healthcare. So that's a lot of dough going
to this one guy. And he didn't have any of
these things. He was a monk howser. Can I say that?

(30:51):
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 for
many of his treatments. Yeah, I wonder though. Was he
a munkhouser cutting smearations? He was cutting and smear and something. Um,
I've got one for you. Sure. So remember we talked

(31:13):
about one Munchausen by internet, 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 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

(31:37):
nineteen year old named Casey Swinson who lived in Kansas,
and she kept what UM the New York Times referred
to in two thousand one as a weblog right 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

(32:00):
then in May two thousand one, there they went to
the weblog and found news that Casey had died, and UM,
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

(32:25):
and received like cards and presents and flowers and condolences
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 Minnie style. I would just
make up these awesome stories about myself. But I mean,

(32:46):
this is a real mental disorder, it's not I'm not
making that. You guys should just choose to be awesome
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

(33:06):
and the same mother daughter duo. The mother used to
inject her daughter with her daughter's knowledge with bacteria and
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,

(33:32):
all right, Well before you send an emails about the
X files and e er and eminem, sorry, mama, Yeah,
all 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

(33:55):
was made to believe I was sick when I wasn't.
And it was on the X Files they investigated Munkhausen
by proxy. Yeah, I don't remember that one, 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

(34:16):
it up, though, but I liked the just stand alone
like there's a shape shifter in the forest right or
um uh pontsa Dai Lyon's men are still living in
Florida because they discovered the fountain because they turn in
a little invisible weirdos. I didn't watch that show at
the time, but the stand alone ones were like Scooby
Doos hint hint. But I didn't watch that show when

(34:38):
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, 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 was it? X files? Munchausen. Yeah,

(35:00):
type Munchausen. You want to spell it for him? Yeah,
it's 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. And
I would. I would. I should have done a bell
at the first one. Mm hm oh because I missed it.

(35:20):
You can type that into the search bar at how
stuff works dot com to learn more about this mysterious
and extremely fascinating disease UM. And until then, let's do
some listener math. 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 mail and everyone should listen

(35:44):
to this one because it's pretty pretty cool. Dude, are
we gonna put a drum roll in it? 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 it, but it started. And I fish for trout
here and there in North George. It's sort of fun.

(36:05):
I'm not like the hugest fisherman. And Doug is an
avid I think fly fisherman. So we're just gonna 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.

(36:26):
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

(36:47):
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 laughing nervously, she's laughing, her maybe trying the door
handle to see if it's off, but Doug is actually
the one who is nervous because Doug has something very
important to say, and that is Keina. He would like

(37:13):
you to be his wife. He's asking you to marry him.
Right now. We've sort of are, but we're not marrying you.
It's actually Doug and this is the this is the
first for us, is a marriage proposal right here on
the show, somewhere in Idaho. Kina should hopefully have a

(37:34):
ring on her finger at this point. Don't you think?
What do we do with the answer is no? I
guess we'll hear from Doug. We won't break it to 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 Keina and congratulations masseltof again. Right, Yeah,

(37:57):
It's 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
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Stuff Works dot com. To learn more about the podcast,

(38:19):
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