1823 in Harper's Mag. (1875) Mar. 568 What a Munchausen tale!—a tale told by a wise man, signifying nothing.

1834 N. Amer. Rev. Jan. 95 Such veritable historians as the Gullivers and Munchausens, have gravely asserted that whales have been mistaken for islands.

1843 E. S. Wortley Moonshine ii. i. 41 She is excellent fun, with her travelled airs and graces, and extravagant stories of all sorts of impossible adventures—an absolute female Munchausen.

1850 Sci. Amer. 26 Jan. 150 This looks like a Munchausen story. If they discovered the passage, why did they not go through it.

1882 Harper's Mag. Nov. 897/2 If half of what he says is true, we may fairly call him the American Roland or Cid, albeit many critics, more shrewd than genial, have felt more like characterizing him as an American Munchausen.

1952 A. Huxley Let. 20 May (1969) 644 There is something simpatico about Pascal—he is a kind of Central European Baron Munchausen.

1986 Financial Times 5 Feb. i. 19 The swaggering fantasies of Horace, the disastrous part-time machinist, a black Munchausen who sees himself..as ‘film’ director and actor.

1840 J. Romilly Diary 10 July in Cambridge Diary (1967) 196 Blakesley found it necessary to produce a regular Monkhausen [sic] w[hi]ch put an end to all further marvellous stories.

1854 L. Lloyd Scand. Adventures II. 252 Before setting them down as regular ‘Munchausens’.

1951 R. Asher in Lancet 10 Feb. 339/1 Munchausen's syndrome... Here is described a common syndrome which most doctors have seen, but about which little has been written. Like the famous Baron von Munchausen, the persons affected have always travelled widely; and their stories, like those attributed to him, are both dramatic and untruthful. Accordingly the syndrome is respectfully dedicated to the baron, and named after him.

1959 Perspect. Biol. & Med. 2 347 The peripatetic medical vagrant, the itinerant fabricator of a nearly perfect facsimile of serious illness—the victim of Munchausen's syndrome.

1967 Cecil-Loeb Textbk. Med. (ed. 12) 1453/2 The remarkable pathological liars, picturesquely called examples of the Münchhausen syndrome, who travel from hospital to hospital gaining admission by means of dramatic acts of illness.

1993 Independent on Sunday 24 Oct. (Review Suppl.) 15/4 She has wondered whether Donna has Munchausen's Syndrome, whose sufferers chronically present themselves at hospitals with a variety of invented or self-induced injuries or illnesses.

1977 R. Meadow in Lancet 13 Aug. 345/1 Case 1 seems to be the first example of ‘Munchausen syndrome by proxy’.

1985 R. Meadow in Arch. Dis. Childhood 60 389 If a parent is fabricating the illness, the symptoms and signs should go when they are excluded. This is the ideal diagnostic test... Unfortunately for a child with Munchausen syndrome by proxy, it tends to be used as a last resort.

1986 Chicago Tribune 27 July 3 Parents with the disorder create phony or real health problems in a child so they can seek extensive care and perhaps appear devoted to the youngster... The phenomenon is called Munchausen's Syndrome by proxy.

1994 Guardian 28 Jan. 7/1 A sufferer from Munchausen's syndrome by proxy, she induced the children's illnesses by suffocating them or injecting them with dangerous substances.

1999 Mirror 15 June 14/1 His criminal record and reported history of Munchausen's by Proxy were kept from the Crown Court jury at Harrow, west London, who aquitted him of dangerous driving.

2002 Observer 21 Apr. 18/1 Meadow labelled this behaviour Münchausen syndrome by proxy.