Short abstract
Psychiatrist who reinterpreted the Royal Free fatigue epidemic and wrote historical atlases
Colin McEvedy was interested in mass movements of people, whether as a psychiatrist, historian, or demographer, but it was his analysis of a mystery illness at the Royal Free Hospital in London that made his name in psychiatry. In 1955 an epidemic swept through the nursing staff at the Royal Free, closing the hospital for three months. In all, 300 people were affected, 200 of whom were admitted. No one died and not one single hospital patient was affected, and no causative organism was ever found, though not for want of looking. The disease was described as a benign, myalgic form of encephalomyelitis.
Figure 1.
Fifteen years later, Colin McEvedy, then a senior registrar at the Middlesex Hospital, co-wrote two papers (with his boss, Professor Bill Beard), arguing, firstly, that the epidemic was one of conversion hysteria triggered by fear, probably of polio (BMJ 1970;1(687): 7-115411611), which was still a serious problem at the time; and, secondly, that it was one of several reported similar epidemics, others of which were among hospital nurses (BMJ 1970;1(687): 11-155411596).
McEvedy was meanwhile writing a thesis on two epidemics of mass hysteria in girls' schools. His doctoral thesis was accepted without difficulty, but the papers on the Royal Free outbreak were greeted with howls of rage. Although he and Beard emphasised that the diagnosis of hysteria was “not a slur on the individuals or the institution involved” and that “the hysterical reaction is part of everyone's potential,” many people, it seemed, felt that while hysteria was an acceptable diagnosis in the case of schoolgirls, it was not in the case of nurses.
McEvedy and Beard's argument was that, in addition to the absence of an identifiable causative organism, most people recovered unremarkably, and most bio-chemical tests were normal. Most sufferers had depression, fatigue, and vague neurological signs. Many had paralysis or sensory disturbances, but their reflexes were normal. Taking the institution as a whole—staff, students, and patients—the epidemic affected 10.4% of women and only 2.8% of men. Two sufferers who died from other causes (ovarian cancer, disseminated sclerosis) showed no pathological changes. The symptoms were comparable to those of the schoolgirl epidemics that McEvedy had studied. In the second paper, he and Beard showed that eight hospital outbreaks—including that at the Royal Free—and seven other community outbreaks were essentially similar and that the concept of benign myalgic encephalomyelitis would be better named benign myalgia.
McEvedy and Beard's papers were greatly criticised, though they were never contradicted.
As a schoolboy, McEvedy's passion was the classical world, and he probably studied medicine only because his father was a well known surgeon. He was born in Salford and shone at Harrow School, winning a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he kept a pet python. He did his clinical studies at Guy's, moving into his room complete with python, and gave the animal to the zoo after an ultimatum from his first wife, shortly before the birth of his first child.
After doing the obligatory year on the wards he did his national service at the Royal Air Force establishment in Farnborough, researching while there the effects of oxygen deprivation in high flying pilots.
In 1960 he went to the Maudsley for his psychiatry training, where he so impressed Sir Aubrey Lewis, its famed director, that Lewis invited him to join the professorial unit. After completing his diploma in psychological medicine he went to the Middlesex Hospital. He was appointed consultant psychiatrist at St Bernard's, a Victorian asylum, and at Ealing in 1972, and held both posts until his retirement in 1995. During this time he pioneered the movement of most of the St Bernard's patients to the community, and set up a new acute unit where patients had their own rooms.
In addition to his research on hysteria, Colin McEvedy was the author of a number of important atlases of historical demography, and papers and book chapters on bubonic plague and polio in history. Among his books are the Penguin atlases of medieval history and ancient history (both published when he was a registrar at the Maudsley), African history, modern history, European history, and the atlas of world population history. In all, he published more than a dozen history books, most of which are still in print. His two careers, psychiatry and history, ran in parallel and he succeeded in both by making good use of his time, and by turning down social invitations that didn't promise intellectual nourishment.
McEvedy was a polymath, whom his friends used as a walking encyclopaedia for the things they couldn't find in Britannica or on Google; these included, said a friend, the cataloguing system in Caracalla's library or the population of Yucatan at the time of the Toltecs. He was mild mannered, modest, unflappable, witty, and without “side.”
He never regretted not studying history at university, preferring to approach it his way. After a slow start, he became accepted, then respected, and finally revered by professional historians.
Divorced from his first wife, Jenny McKinnon Wood, and predeceased by his second wife and co-author, Sarah Leakey, he leaves three daughters.
Colin Peter McEvedy, consultant psychiatrist St Bernard's and Ealing hospitals, west London, 1972-95 (b Salford 1930; q Oxford/Guy's Hospital, London, 1955; DPM, DM, FRCPsych), died from myelofibrosis on 1 August 2005.