Rosemary Underhill

Rosemary A. Underhill, MB. B.S. (1937-2021) also known as Rosemary Underhill O'Gorman, was a Physician Consultant and a Fellow of Royal College of Surgeons. Underhill trained as a physician, a surgeon and an obstetrician in London, England and was a medical student when she witnessed the Royal Free Hospital outbreak in 1955.

Dr. Underhill was a consultant and member of the board of Trustees of the New Jersey ME/CFS Association for many years. Dr Underhill died in 2021.

School phobia / school refusal
Dr Underhill highlighted the misdiagnosis of ME/CFS in children as a mental disorder or parental problem: "'ME/CFS has often been misdiagnosed, as School Avoidance Behavior, or as Munchausen's syndrome by proxy (a condition in which, a parent fabricates their child's illness).'"

2017 Pediatric Primer
Dr. Underhill was one of the authors of the 2017 Pediatric Primer published in Frontiers in Pediatrics.
 * Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Diagnosis and Management in Young People: A Primer by Peter C. Rowe, Rosemary A. Underhill, Kenneth J. Friedman, Alan Gurwitt, Marvin S. Medow, Malcolm S. Schwartz, Nigel Speight, Julian M. Stewart, Rosamund Vallings and Katherine S. Rowe (Full Text)

2021 Royal Free outbreak follow-up
In 2021, fifty-eight years after the Royal Free Hospital outbreak of myalgic encephalomyelitis, Underhill and Baillod interviewed former hospital staff, including some who developed ME. They found that the former staff's description of the patients was inconsistent with McEvedy and Beard's hypothesis that the illness was psychosomatic, i.e., physical illness caused by mass hysteria or psychoneurosis. The former staff described clear objective signs that the cause of illness was physical in origin, and stated that most staff at the time believed it was the result of an infectious disease.

Books

 * 2002, Dr. Underhill was on the writing committee for A Consensus Manual for the Primary Care and Management of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Joseph F. John, Jr., MD, Editor and James M. Oleske, MD, MPH, Associate Editor.

Hypothesis on the disease ME/CFS
Myalgic encephalomyelitis, chronic fatigue syndrome: An infectious disease - Medical Hypotheses December 2015 Volume 85, Issue 6, Pages 765–773

Clinical guides

 * Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis - Primer for Clinical Practitioners 2014 Edition IACFS/ME (Co-author.)


 * A Consensus Manual for the Primary Care and Management of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome The Academy of Medicine of New Jersey and the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services. (Writing committee member.)

Notable articles

 * 2021, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Organic Disease or Psychosomatic Illness? A Re-Examination of the Royal Free Epidemic of 1955 (Full text)
 * 2007, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in Children and Adolescents - (Full text)
 * 2006, Prevalence of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Chronic Fatigue Within Families of CFS Patients - (Abstract)

Open letter to The Lancet
Two open letters to the editor of The Lancet urged the editor to commission a fully independent review of the PACE trial, which the journal had published in 2011. In 2016, Dr. Underhill, along with 41 colleagues in the ME/CFS field, signed the second letter.
 * 10 February 2016, An open letter to The Lancet, again - Virology blog

CFSAC testimony

 * October 2012 Public Comment to CFSAC - "Suggested protocol for investigating cluster outbreaks of ME/CFS"

Learn more

 * Obituary - 2021