Richard Asher
| Richard Asher | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
Richard Alan John Asher 3 April 1912 Brighton, Sussex |
| Died | 25 April 1969 (aged 57) Marylebone, London |
| Cause of death | Suicide |
| Occupation | Physician |
| Spouse(s) | Margaret Augusta Eliot |
| Children |
Peter Asher Jane Asher Clare Asher |
| Parent(s) | Felix and Louise Asher née Stern |
Richard Alan John Asher, FRCP (3 April 1912 – 25 April 1969) was an eminent British endocrinologist and haematologist. As the senior physician responsible for the mental observation ward at the Central Middlesex Hospital he described and named Munchausen syndrome in a 1951 article in The Lancet.
Richard Asher was born to the Reverend Felix Asher and his wife Louise (née Stern). He married Margaret Augusta Eliot at St Pancras' Church, London on 27 July 1943, whereupon his father-in-law gave him a complete set of the Oxford English Dictionary, which physician and medical ethicist Maurice Pappworth alleged was the source of Asher's "accidental" reputation as a medical etymologist. They had three children: Peter Asher (born 1944), a member of the pop duo Peter & Gordon and later record producer, Jane Asher (born 1946), a film and TV actress and novelist, and Clare Asher (born 1948), a radio actress.
The Asher family home above his private consulting rooms at 57 Wimpole Street was briefly notable when Paul McCartney lived there in 1964–66 during his relationship with Jane Asher.
In 1964 Asher suddenly gave up his hospital post and perhaps all medical activities. He suffered from depression in later life and reportedly died by his own hand at the age of 57.
Asher was regarded as "one of the foremost medical thinkers of our times", who emphasised the need "to be increasingly critical of our own and other people's thinking". Asher was particularly concerned that "many clinical notions are accepted because they are comforting rather than because there is any evidence to support them".
Asher was hailed as a pioneer in challenging the value of excessive bed rest following treatment, and argued that the Pel-Ebstein fever (a fever characteristic for Hodgkin's disease) was an example of a condition that exists only because it has a name. Asher's 1949 paper "Myxoedematous Madness" alerted a generation of physicians to the interaction between the brain and the thyroid gland. As a result, young and elderly psychiatric patients are now screened for thyroid malfunction. Some of the 'madness' cases are now thought to be the early descriptions of Hashimoto's encephalopathy, a rare neuroendocrine syndrome sometimes presenting with psychosis.
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