Remember the 1980s, when the word yuppie came into vogue, disparaging young, upwardly mobile professionals? These were the expensively-dressed types who worked in the City of London in high-pressured jobs that demanded 14-hour days and weekend shifts.
There was more than a hint of jealousy behind this belittling description, people’s resentment of such high-fliers fuelled by their wealth and status. So, when hundreds of overworked young professionals began to complain of a new ailment, whose symptoms included exhaustion, achiness and brain fog, it was a short step to calling it Yuppie Flu: in other words, brought upon themselves by burning the candle at both ends. Newsweek, which coined the term, described it as “a fashionable form of hypochondria”.
Even now, that put-down enrages me. This was the attitude that encouraged everyone – the medical profession included – to categorise what became known as chronic fatigue syndrome or ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis) as self-inflicted and/or imaginary. When sufferers failed to make a swift recovery, it was assumed their problem was more psychological than physical. “Pull yourself together” was the kindest of the helpful comments directed towards those it felled.
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And I do mean felled. As someone who came down with ME in the early 1990s, I can tell you that, when it was at its worst, getting out of bed was difficult: not just because of feeling weak, tired and unable to think straight, but because moving hurt, sometimes so severely that........