Amazon tells me that the book was Overcoming Chronic Fatigue by Mary Burgess, and it was recommended to me as the best book for CFS by a close friend who’s a consultant psychiatrist.
As I remember, the first half of it describes what was happening to me so well that I could have written it myself, and the second half (the treatment) seemed weirdly irrelevant. I gave it to Oxfam in the end (the usual fate of my books) so I can’t check what she actually said about neurasthenia.
The ngrams technique is brilliant! Actually Fibromyalgia seems to have started in ’66. I am very interested in the fact that both things have fallen since 2000, any idea what that would mean?
Also, could you try some of the other things I’m claiming? I have done, and found what I expected, but if I say what to search for, that will look like I’m leading you.
I am certain to have been imprecise about other issues. I’ve only been thinking about this for three months, and I was writing what I thought, and now I can’t distinguish my own writing from my memories or the truth! And in my original narrative I glossed over any details that detracted from the story, while being careful not to say anything I knew to be untrue or miss out anything I thought relevant. If I have been deliberately imprecise in misleading ways you have my word that it was unconscious bias, for what that’s worth.
All changes will have happened slowly, and new ‘syndromes’ take a while to be accepted and given names, so the raw ngrams graph you link to looks as I’d expect up until 2000. The fall after, I can’t explain, and the existence of Fibromyalgia in 1966 is a surprise too.
Looked up Billewicz’ paper and it was published in 1969.
Amazon tells me that the book was Overcoming Chronic Fatigue by Mary Burgess, and it was recommended to me as the best book for CFS by a close friend who’s a consultant psychiatrist.
As I remember, the first half of it describes what was happening to me so well that I could have written it myself, and the second half (the treatment) seemed weirdly irrelevant. I gave it to Oxfam in the end (the usual fate of my books) so I can’t check what she actually said about neurasthenia.
The ngrams technique is brilliant! Actually Fibromyalgia seems to have started in ’66. I am very interested in the fact that both things have fallen since 2000, any idea what that would mean?
Also, could you try some of the other things I’m claiming? I have done, and found what I expected, but if I say what to search for, that will look like I’m leading you.
I am certain to have been imprecise about other issues. I’ve only been thinking about this for three months, and I was writing what I thought, and now I can’t distinguish my own writing from my memories or the truth! And in my original narrative I glossed over any details that detracted from the story, while being careful not to say anything I knew to be untrue or miss out anything I thought relevant. If I have been deliberately imprecise in misleading ways you have my word that it was unconscious bias, for what that’s worth.
All changes will have happened slowly, and new ‘syndromes’ take a while to be accepted and given names, so the raw ngrams graph you link to looks as I’d expect up until 2000. The fall after, I can’t explain, and the existence of Fibromyalgia in 1966 is a surprise too.
Looked up Billewicz’ paper and it was published in 1969.