Humpty-Dumpty Syndrome

Any allegorical term from the children’s nursery rhyme, Humpty-Dumpty, who ‘...all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put together again’.
Internal medicine The term refers to the specialty ‘fragmentation’ or sub-specialisation
Neurology A form of disability neurosis in which there is physical recovery from an injury, but the ‘scars’ of childhood psychological trauma intervene, preventing mental recovery. The name Humpty-Dumpty phenomenon has been used in reference to defects in cerebral blood flow and for prosopagnosia—a visual agnosia characterised by the loss in the ability to recognise familiar faces
Orthopaedics A term for low back pain which is unresponsive to therapy
Psychiatry Borderline psychiatric personalities that can’t be salvaged
Trauma surgery Polytraumatized patients who require multiple, not fully corrective, operations