Malingering, the OED tells us, is something originally done by the armed forces: 'To pretend illness, or to produce or protract illness, in order to escape duty; said esp. of soldiers and sail-ors.' To avoid conscription (the first usage is recorded in 1820), or to escape the horrors of what the military authorities have referred to since at least the 17th century as 'engagement', has always required a certain amount of ingenuity. And the onus has usually been on the medical profession to decide when someone is pretending, producing or protracting an illness to avoid their duties: the implication being, as the definition suggests, that the malingerer is responsible for his condition. His illness is an artefact, and the escape artist is a weak character. 'Genius', Sartre said, is the word we use for people who get themselves out of impossible situations: so is 'malingerer'.

LRB 3 March 2005 | PDF Download