Baron Münchhausen and the syndrome which bears his name: history of an endearing personage and of a strange mental disorder.

Munchausen syndrome, a mental disorder, was named in 1951 by Richard Asher after Karl Friedrich Hieronymus, Baron Münchhausen (1720-1797), whose name had become proverbial as the narrator of false and ridiculously exaggerated exploits. The first edition of Münchhausen's tales appeared anonymously in 1785 (Baron Münchausen's narrative of his marvelous travels and campaigns in Russia), and was wrongly attributed to German poet Gottfried August Bürger who actually edited the first German version the following year. The real author, Rudolph Erich Raspe, never claimed his rights over the successive editions of this book. This paper reviews the extraordinary personality of Baron Münchhausen, and the circumstances which led Rudolph Erich Raspe, Gottfried August Bürger, and Richard Asher to pay homage to this very endearing personage.