In the late 19th century, there was a slew of unexplained maladies among people who were involved in train accidents. After a series of crashes in Britain in 1867, so many victims came forward that the syndrome was dubbed "railway spine." While spinal difficulties were prominent, the effects were varied, from anxiety to hearing loss to paralysis, and some even died. But doctors could find no injury or source for those symptoms.
The problem was, there was no way to really verify these claims, since medical science at the time was limited largely to what doctors could see. And they couldn’t see anything wrong with these victims—there was no obvious spinal injury, and traditional concussion symptoms were known to disappear after a while. But these people were reporting injuries for years.
The railroads called bullshit. They said these people were just malingerers who wanted money. John Eric Erichsen coined the term and wrote a whole book about these people. The craziest part was, some of the folks complaining of physical or mental problems were witnesses. They hadn’t even been in the crash.
Railway spine remained a mystery to those who suffered from it and their doctors, but we have an explanation in the present. Read what we know now at Jalopnik. -via Damn Interesting