HYPOCHONDRIASIS.1 Definition. A disease of the nervous system, of unknown and possibly varying seat. It is markedly hereditary, being one of the transformed neuroses which descend from a parent stock strongly tainted with insanity. Its principal feature is mental depression, occurring without apparently adequate cause; and taking the shape, either from the first, or very soon, of a conviction in the patient's mind that he is the victim of serious bodily disease. The sufferer's belief in this disease is so firm, that he describes minutely the symptoms, which as he fancies, indicate its existence. But he may place the imaginary malady in almost any organ of the body, and he usually describes some symptoms which are anomalous, or even incredible. Finally, hypochondriasis may be evoked by a real organic disease acting as an irritant to an hereditarily predisposed nervous system; in this case, the anomalous nervous symptoms may mask, and even conceal, the occurrence of serious changes in some viscus. Nomenclature. The same name has been applied to the disease since the days of Hippocrates: it has always been known as "Hypochondriasis," or the "hypochondriac disorder," and sometimes as the "vapours," or the "spleen ;" but these two last synonyms are, in fact, mere explanations of the ancient hypothesis which was expressed in the word Hypochondriasis. This hypothesis it is really important to say a few words about, since the vulgar conception of the 1 By William Withey Gull, M.D., and Edmund Anstey, M.D. Reprinted by permission of Messrs. Macmillan and Co. from Reynolds' 'System of Medicine,' vol. ii, 1868, p. 293. |