Today, hypochondriasis is a mental disturbance characterized by unfounded fear of serious illness, but in the seventeenth century, it was a common physical condition. Over the next 150 years in Great Britain, the disorder was transformed. What had been an affliction of abdominal organs became a disorder of the nervous system and brain, and finally the mind. Two factors contributed to this change. One was a shift in the social context of emerging medical knowledge. As medical practice moved from bedside to hospital, illnesses that had involved the whole person came to reside in bodily organs. Hypochondriasis became illness without somatic disease. The other was a change in English society that altered the disorder's social significance. During the Enlightenment, hypochondriasis became, on the one hand, a mark of distinction conferring class status, and on the other, an object of social disapproval. Its history yields perspective on the social forces at work in and around the disorder today.
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