The Secret Garden and Professor Meadow

[steepholm]

Much has been written about The Secret Garden and Froebel, mens sana in corpore sano, and all that jazz, but as I was marking an essay just now, it occurred to me that Archibald Craven may be one of the earliest representations of Münchausen by proxy - more than 65 years before Roy Meadow first described the condition. Has this ever been remarked? (This is not necessarily to weigh in on whether the condition actually exists, of course. Last time I looked, Mr Craven was a fiction, and for all I know his syndrome is too.)

P.S. The perils of the spell checker! One of my students just wrote that The Secret Garden was written by Frames Bennett.

Comments

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Oh, interesting diagnosis. But perhaps a folie a deux in this case? Colin himself bought into it, fervently. Before Mary got to work on him, he didn't improve when his father was absent (as many of these children do), but kept up the hysterics.

Mind you, Meadow was appallingly overzealous in the Clark case. Yet there are certainly parents who play this sort of sick game, and they have been caught on camera in their children's rooms, putting nasties in their drips. I rather suspect there are quacks who support them--Münchausen by proxy by proxy? Some of the more grandiose "detoxification treatments" for autism have that air about them: brave maverick doctors, heroic parents, desperately unlucky kids.

Nine

[gair.livejournal.com]

I like that.

Also, we watched the Agnieszka Holland movie last night for the first time. We thought it was good.