Medical Munchausen

The hulking (260 Ibs.) six-footer told the desk sergeant in Crawfordsville, Ind. that while he was working on a nearby farm, some baling wire had stuck in his legs. He had had a tetanus shot, he added, but by now the pain was terrible: he could barely walk, needed medical attention--but could not pay for it. He was, he said, Leo Lamphere, 47, of Watertown, N.Y. The sympathetic sergeant called a doctor who saw what looked like clots in the veins on both 'Lamphere's legs, ordered him to Culver Union Hospital. There Lamphere began spitting blood. He was put to bed, acted like a grateful model patient. That was a fortnight ago.

Next day one of the Culver staff saw a news story about a "hospital bum" who could bring up blood at will. The story was based on an article in the A.M.A. Journal by Iowa City's Dr. John S. Chapman describing a galloping case of the "Munchausen syndrome"* (TIME, March 5, 1951) and warning hospitals against this itinerant who, strangely, always used the same name. Hospital Superintendent Ralph Haas phoned Iowa City to ask Dr. Chapman the man's name. "Leo Lamphere," was the reply. Soon, into Lamphere's room marched two deputy sheriffs with a warrant charging vagrancy. The "patient" was lying in a bloodstained bed with an oxygen tube up his nose. "Come along," said a deputy. Lamphere pulled the tube out of his nose, kicked off the bed cover, snapped: "I can dress myself." While hovering nurses protested that he was too sick to be moved, Lamphere was led off to jail.

"Indiana Cyclone." His case history, as told by Dr. Chapman, is one of the longest and strangest in medical annals. For 40 days in 1954, Lamphere kept the State University of Iowa hospitals in turmoil. He had arrived complaining of anguish from pain in the left chest; he obviously had phlebitis with clots, and he coughed blood. He demanded and got a narcotic to relieve the pain. He had uncanny knowledge of the location of his veins, was suspiciously familiar with hospital routine. He tyrannized doctors and nurses, was described by a resident as "obese, obtuse, obstinate, obstreperous and obscene."

Lamphere claimed to have been a professional wrestler billed as "the Indiana Cyclone," also a ship's carpenter and bosun's mate. He told Munchausen stories about having had his appendix removed aboard a tugboat in Ireland, of exploratory kidney surgery in Japan. A crosshatch of surgical scars showed how often he had been under the knife. Disarmingly,

Lamphere signed an authorization for a request to a San Francisco hospital for data on his treatment there. He must have made a shrewd guess, for the answer did not arrive in time to help the harassed Iowa City doctors. Suspicious of his continual coughing or spitting of blood, the physicians tried every stratagem they could think of to catch him in deliberate self-injury. They never could. Four times Lamphere angrily signed himself out of the hospital, complaining of inadequate care, stormed to the main door--and there was persuaded to return because he was again spitting blood.

Jigsaw Saga. At last, convinced that he was a phony, the university hospitals' doctors sent Lamphere packing with a bus ticket to Chicago, gave him money out of their own pockets for cab fare to the terminal. He never got there, but stayed drunk in a downtown hotel, was soon back at the hospital, coughing blood and fevered (103DEG), pleading for readmission. He won it. After a few days he went berserk, terrorized the ward, smashed furniture and equipment, gashed his thigh with scissors. After more such self-inflicted wounds, Lamphere was committed to a mental hospital. He escaped.

By this time, Dr. Chapman's inquiries were bringing jigsaw pieces of an amazing story. Since 1943, Lamphere had collected on claims from several insurance companies for injuries to his legs or hands allegedly suffered in California, Louisiana, Ontario, New Jersey and Kentucky. He had had lots of expensive hospital care all over California and in a dozen other . states. Repeatedly he had slashed himself, then ripped the bandages off the wound and torn it open again with his fingers. No doctor had been able to figure out how he managed to spit blood at will.

After Lamphere's escape from Iowa City, Dr. Chapman stayed on his trail. But even after publication of the Journal article, Lamphere managed to get in two luxurious weeks at Baltimore's famed Johns Hopkins Hospital before he moved on to Indiana and was recognized. State hospitals had previously refused to keep him because they are for residents, and he claimed to be a resident of New York. But last week Lamphere agreed in court to undergo psychiatric examination, was shipped off to the state hospital at Westville, Ind. Psychiatrists hope to keep Lamphere in the maximum-security institution long enough to learn what can be done for a medical Munchausen.

* Referring to the autobiographic tall tales in Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia, written as a 49-page potboiler in London in 1785 by Rudolf Erich Raspe (1737-94), a fugitive embezzler from Hanover, and enlarged in later editions by Grub Street hacks.

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