In 1934 there was an outbreak of a condition then referred to as ''atypical poliomyelitis'' at the Los Angeles County Hospital. Strongly resembling what is now called chronic fatigue syndrome and affecting a large number of nurses and doctors, at the time it was considered a form of polio. In 1955 at the Royal Free Hospital in London, United Kingdom, another outbreak occurred that also affected mostly the hospital staff. Also resembling CFS, it was called both ''Royal Free disease'' and ''benign myalgic encephalomyelitis'' and formed the basis of descriptions by Acheson, Ramsay, and others. In 1969 benign myalgic encephalomyelitis was first classified into the International Classification of Diseases under ''Diseases of the nervous system''.
The name chronic fatigue syndrome was proposed in the 1988 article, "Chronic fatigue syndrome: a working case definition", (the Holmes definition), to replace ''chronic Epstein-Barr virus syndrome''. This research case definition was published after US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention epidemiologists examined patients at the Lake Tahoe outbreak. In 2006 the CDC commenced a national program to educate the American public and health care professionals about CFS.
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