Abstract
For us today hypochondria is a state of over-anxiety about one’s health. Clinically, there is debate as to whether any distinct syndrome of hypochondria, or hypochondriasis, really exists, as to whether it cannot always be broken down into other syndromes (so that it would never be adequate as a diagnosis in any particular case). Authorities who allow the distinctiveness of hypochondria identify three major elements in its clinical pattern: ‘The first is a preoccupation with bodily symptoms, the second is a fear of such symptoms, and the third is a conviction that disease is present despite the lack of objective evidence and, usually, despite the completion of all appropriate examinations and investigations.’ Historically, hypochondria has received any number of definitions and explanations, from initial association with disorder of the digestive tract to eventual association with any state of melancholy (the context in which James Boswell could sign himself ‘The Hypochondriack’ in a series of essays for The London Magazine commencing in 1777). A constant and important part of this history, moreover, is the discussion of hypochondria along with hysteria, whether to emphasize their similarities or their differences.
‘Debate in Congregation on proposed admission of women to some of the Honour Schools. I had no idea of speaking, but did say a few words — to the effect that it was a question for doctors.… ’
C. L. Dodgson, diary entry (1884)
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Notes
‘Debate in Congregation …’ C. L. Dodgson, diary entry for 11 March 1884, The Diaries of Lewis Carroll ed. R. L. Green (London: Cassell, 1953) vol. II p. 424.
‘The first is …’ Harold Merskey, The Analysis of Hysteria (London: Baillière Tindall, 1979) p. 131.
‘the great similitude’ / ‘the difference …’ Thomas Sydenham (writing in 1681), The Entire Works of Dr Thomas Sydenham (London, 1742) p. 368.
‘upon the whole …’ Robert Whytt, Observations on the Nature, Causes and Cure of those disorders which have been commonly called Nervous, Hypochondriac or Hysteric (Edinburgh, 1765) p. 107.
‘hypochondria usually …’ E. F. Dubois, Histoire philosophique de l’hypochondrie et de l’hystérie (Paris, 1833) p. 22. ‘physicians have …’ Whytt, Observations, p. iii.
Lallemand Claude-François Lallemand, Des Pertes séminales involontaires (Paris 1836–42).
‘the battle …’ J. L. Milton, On the Pathology and Treatment of Spermatorrhoea 12th edn (London, 1887) p. 5.
‘the present state …’ ibid. p. 6.
‘seminal emissions …’ ibid. p. 14.
‘in men …’ ibid. p. 16.
‘lads …’ ibid. p. 19.
‘an emission …’ / ‘a very dangerous tenet’ ibid. pp. 12–13.
‘I am putting …’ ibid. p. 30.
‘will grapple …’ ibid. p. 30.
‘epilepsy …’ ibid. p. 33.
‘it is useless …’ ibid. p. 161. ‘urethral ring’ / ‘electric alarum’ Laws Milton provides drawings of these two appliances (pp. 129 and 132), together with the name and address of a supplier. Nor is he alone in his various suggested remedies. Acton, for example, shows much of the same detailed obsessiveness and rigour: ‘I advise an early riser to take lodgings at St John’s Wood and attend the Public Gymnasium at Primrose Hill from six to eight AM. After that hour the place is beset by small boys….’ The Functions and Disorders 1st edn (London, 1857) p. 80; ‘walk four or six miles, in flannel waistcoat and drawers, two pairs of trousers, comforter, and two coats; then come home, lay under a feather-bed for an hour, and sponge over’, ibid. p. 81. He is perhaps less inclined, however, to some of the more extreme mechanical treatments: ‘Trouseau … recommends an instrument to pass up the rectum to press on the vesiculae, and mechanically prevent the emissions. I have tried the plan on one or two patients, but was obliged to leave it off, as I found that it produced considerable irritation’, ibid. p. 80.
‘Ch. I …’ / ‘Ch. III …’ John Davenport, Curiositates Eroticae Physiologiae (London, 1875) pp. ix, xii. The French epitaph mentioned, roughly translated, is as follows: ‘I died of love undertaken between the legs of a lady, happy to have lost my life in the same place where I was given it’; Davenport then goes on to add the appropriate Victorian gloss, ‘the unfortunate story of a young man whose hand had been amputated, and who, when the cure was nearly, but not quite, effected, having wished to embrace his wife, and being forbidden by the surgeon, had recourse to masturbation, and died four days afterwards’, pp. 69–70.
‘this supreme …’ ‘Walter’, My Secret Life, p. 234. ‘his positive …’ ibid. p. 236 (comment by editors Phyllis and Eberhard Kronhausen). ‘we must steer clear …’ Charles Kingsley, letter to J. S. Mill (1870), Charles Kingsley: His Letters and Memories of His Life edited by His Wife (London, 1877) vol. II p. 247.
‘I was ready …’ / ‘If you won’t …’ / ‘I was so …’ / ‘The hysterical passion …’ / ‘Then …’ Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone (1868), Penguin English Library edition (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1978) pp. 130, 253, 280, 403, 422.
‘a green woman …’ Cf. N. P. Davies, The Life of Wilkie Collins (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956) p. 4.
‘As she laughed …’ T. S. Eliot, ‘Hysteria’, Collected Poems1909–1962 (London: Faber & Faber, 1963) p. 34.
a very long history For an account of the history, see Ilza Veith, Hysteria: The History of a Disease (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1965).
‘failure to recognize …’ E. M. Thornton, Hypnotism, Hysteria and Epilepsy: An Historical Synthesis (London: Heinemann, 1976) p. 115. ‘a vigorous entity …’ Merskey, The Analysis of Hysteria, p. 234.
‘Hysteria: a condition …’ Brain Injuries Committee (Medical Research Council), War Memorandum No. 4: A Glossary of Psychological Terms Commonly Used in Cases of Head Injury (1941), cit. Merskey, The Analysis of Hysteria p. 258.
‘the matrix or womb …’ Plato, Timaeus § 91, Timaeus and Critias (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971) p. 120.
‘an affect of the Mother …’ Edward Jorden, A Briefe Discourse of a Disease called the Suffocation of the Mother (London, 1603) pp. 5–6.
‘the Vapours …’ Joseph Addison, The Spectator no. 115 (12 July 1711),
The Spectator ed. D. F. Bond (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965) vol. I p. 473. Earlier that year (3 March), the journal had carried an advertisement for Bernard de Mandeville’s ‘just published’ Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysteric Passions, vulgarly called the Hypo in Men and Vapours in Women.
‘hysteria, male and female’ Kingsley, letter to J. S. Mill, p. 270. ‘emotion is …’ Robert Brudenell Carter, On the Pathology and Treatment of Hysteria (London, 1853) p. 25. ‘that protean disease …’ The Lancet 3 January 1891, p. 2; the lecture by Dr Robert Saundby was on ‘Toxic Hysteria’. It can be noted that Sydenham in 1681 was already lamenting the difficulty of comprehending hysteria ‘under any uniform appearance’, it confronting the physician with ‘a kind of disorderly train of symptoms; so that ’tis a difficult task to write the history of this disease’, The Entire Works p. 375.
‘the first cunt-knight …’ cit. Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977) p. 73.
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© 1982 Stephen Heath
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Heath, S. (1982). III. In: The Sexual Fix. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16767-8_3
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