University of Virginia Library

HYPOCHONDRIACISM.

—Burns.

Hypochondriacism is a disorder produced by the
disorganization of the nervous system, whereby the
patient ceases to view things as they exist, and acquires
the property of seeing others that have no
existence. His faculties become changed, and he
regards chimeras as realities, and realities as chimeras.
On all points excepting one, a hypochondriac
may be perfectly sane, but on that one he
looks upon the rest of the world as fools, and himself
as the only person to whom heaven has given
light. There are many shades of this disorder, and
the ways in which it manifests itself are innumerable.
Doctor Johnson gives a very meagre definition
of a hypochondriac when he says it is “one

affected with melancholy.” Now, though in some
instances this may be the primary cause, in nine
cases out of ten it is the offspring of vanity and ignorance,
which, secreting themselves in a man's
brain, engender there strange and overweening notions
of his own qualities and capabilities; this, in
the first stage of the disorder, is termed self-conceit,
but swelling beyond all imaginable or endurable
bounds, it becomes at last a confirmed case of mental
delusion, and takes the form of medical, legal,
religious, political, or literary hypochondriacism.

One of the peculiarities of this disease is the
manner in which those who are affected with it
laugh and jeer at all who are in a similar predicament
with themselves—the quickness with which
they detect their neighbor's infirmities, and the obstinacy
with which they shut their eyes to their
own. Thus, a well-informed gentleman, who eat,
drank, slept, and behaved himself like other people,
could never get over the strange belief that he was
a barleycorn, and at the mere sight of a barn-yard
fowl he would fly into his house and lock himself
in, for fear of being picked up and transferred
to the crop of his enemy; yet the same gentleman
was very much tickled with the story of
another hypochondriac, who in walking imagined
that he did not possess the power of turning, but

must of necessity move on in a direct line, and who
had cut himself severely by marching straight
through a shop window which unfortunately
crossed his way—just as one foolish hypochondriacal
author will laugh at another's expectations
of immortality, although at the same time he
does not entertain a doubt of its being his own
inheritance. I knew a profound scholar, and what
is more, a sensible man, but who, nevertheless,
insisted that he was cursed with a cast-iron nose.
No arguments could convince him of the fallacy of
what he considered so self-evident that it might be
observed by any one; and when a storm of thunder
and lightning occurred, he was to be seen running
about in an agony of fear, and using all sorts
of precautions to prevent his metal proboscis from attracting
the electric fluid; after the storm he would
regain his composure, and thank heaven for his
remarkable deliverance. A friend, to cure him of
this fancy, told him of another person who imagined
he had a glass nose, and was afraid of going
out on a windy day for fear of getting it injured,
at which he laughed immoderately, and proceeded
to show very plainly that no man ever had, or could
by any possibility have a glass nose. The other
then began gently to insinuate doubts respecting
the existence of any metallic substance on his
own face, upon which he grew mightily offended,
hit his nose a sharp blow, and asked him if he
could not hear it was cast-iron by the sound! This
would all seem ridiculous enough to a spectator,
but how many hundred thousands are there in this
world who terrify themselves with evils just as imaginary
as cast-metal noses, yet at the same time
laugh heartily at the fears of those who entertain
apprehensions for their glass ones? but because
their numbers are such as to keep each other in
countenance, they escape the charge of hypochondriacism
which manifestly attaches to them.

Of all classes of hypochondriacs, the health-preserving
are perhaps the most numerous and notorious.
These are the people for whom heaven has
not been able to make any thing fit to eat. Every
dish that is set upon the table is, according to their
view of things, impregnated with subtle poison.
One produces flatulency, another acidity—beef is
indigestible, ham is bilious, tea nervous, and so on
from the simplest receipt in Dr. Kitchiner's cookery
to the most complicated effort of Mons. Ude. Whenever
they eat they say, “I know it is wrong;” and
look upon a person who makes a hearty, careless,
miscellaneous meal, as one who is not long for this
world. All their conversation turns upon their internal
concerns; and, in company, they favor the

unfortunate lady or gentleman who sits next them
with anecdotes of their stomach and digestive reminiscences
for the last three weeks. They are amateurs
in physic, and swallow all sorts of abominations
with infinite relish; and then they wonder,
for all the care they take of themselves, that they
are no better. Poor wretches! the undertaker eyes
them as he walks along; the coffin-maker takes
their dimensions in his “mind's eye,” and proceeds
to make their mahogany resting-places on speculation;
the sexton chuckles at their approach, and
says he hopes he “see's them well!” the resurrectionist
marks them for his own; and the surgeon,
surveying their formation with a scientific eye,
longs to settle some disputed points of anatomy by
means of their unfortunate bodies. Death comes
at last and pops the little life out of them that dieting
and doctoring have left, and they are troubled
with hypochondriacism no more!

Literary, as well as health-preserving hypochondriacism,
is not unfrequently occasioned by a slight
touch of dyspepsia. Young gentlemen with yellow
faces and weak digestions, mistake the sickly fancies
produced by a diseased state of the humors for
the coruscations of genius, and whenever they feel
a little unwell, concoct what they call poetry, which
is merely a number of hypochondriacal notions

strung together, in which they abuse the “unfeeling
world,” and long for “pleasant death,” and the
“quiet peaceful grave,” at the same time that they
are taking their spring physic, and using all necessary
precautions to avoid one and keep out of the
other as long as possible. They poetize somewhat
after this fashion:
and such like abominable nonsense, which many
people call “very pretty,” and “very pathetic,” and
so they come all at once to believe themselves poets,
and go on wishing themselves dead, until people of
common sense would have no objection if they
were taken at their word. One of the most absurd
peculiarities of this tribe is, their invariably
assuming that physical imbecility and mental
strength go together, and vice versa, as if a sound
constitution, a cheerful temper, and a vigorous and
imaginative mind were incompatible. William
Shakspeare, Walter Scott, and Robert Burns were,
in their several ways, the three greatest men that
ever lived, and at the same time three as healthy,
hearty, and merry fellows, as the world has seen,
and never wrote a line of regular churchyard poetry
in their lives.

Political hypochondriacs are as thick as flies at
midsummer, and are more headstrong, absurd, and
obstinate, than any of the other classes. No matter
how monstrous their dogmas are, the pertinacity
with which they cling to them leaves the man with
the cast-iron nose far behind. A member of the
English parliament got it into his head, and all the
other members could not get it out, that the great
cause of distress among the poor was the plentifulness
of the grain harvests, that starvation was a
necessary consequence of over-production, and the
more wheat there was grown the less there would
be eaten. In this country certain people advocate a
tariff that will increase commerce and support the
navy, by doing away with the necessity for ships
and sailors; while others believe in a dissolution of
society, in consequence of a few men, calling themselves
masons, getting together in a snug room, for
the purpose of singing and drinking without fear of
interruption. Indeed, there is no notion too improbable
to find its way into the head of a political
hypochondriac. Many well-meaning individuals
firmly believed as soon as General Jackson became

president, that men would hang on trees as thick
as acorns, that he would fire the city of Washington,
destroy the constitution of the United States,
put the country under martial law, keep his hand
in practice by shooting a dozen citizens or so of a
morning before breakfast, and do a number of other
improper things for reasons best known to himself;
and when they are told that no such thing has happened,
they very wisely shake their heads, and say
the ides of March are not yet over. There is
another set of political hypochondriacs who credit
whatever the newspapers tell them, and of course
are worse than all the rest put together.

Then there are the religious hypochondriacs,
who firmly believe that no one can be in the right
except themselves—

But this is ticklish ground. In theatricals the cases
of hypochondriacism are innumerable, and generally
incurable. I have seen matrons of forty-five years
of age and one hundred and fifty pounds weight,
who really thought they looked and played the
girlish Juliet to perfection, and whom no criticism
could convince to the contrary; and I have
seen a little fat fellow of five feet and an inch, who
looked upon himself as the beau ideal of Roman
grandeur and dignity. I have seen Miss — fancy
she could play a fashionable lady, and Mr. —
imagine that he looked like a gentleman. I have
seen—but cases multiply too fast.

The greatest hypochondriac of modern times,
however, is undoubtedly Robert Owen. This very
singular individual has taken it into his head, that
by means of certain strange doctrines which have
the immediate effect of crazing the intellects of
those who dabble in them, the world is to be regenerated,
and the perfectability of human nature accomplished.
He actually believes the time is coming
when men will not lie, nor women flirt—when
banks will not break nor bills be protested—when
tailors will keep their words and gentlemen pay
their debts—when brokers will be generous and
politicians independent—when a man will love his
neighbor as himself, and lend him money without
interest or security—when Cobbett will be consistent
and Lady Morgan unaffected, and other things
equally strange and improbable. This is the greatest
case of hypochondriacism on record, either
moral or medical, and any man who will believe
these things, will believe that the world is growing
honester.