Hypochondria

The Lancet: "In classical medicine, such as in Hippocrates' Aphorisms, hypochondria denoted the soft part of the body below the ribs (literally, below cartilage). This region was identified as the source of black bile that, when excessive, was believed to cause diseases of the mind and body. Among these diseases were hypochondria, which was termed hypochondriasis when pathological, and melancholia. In his Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Robert Burton associated �windy, hypochondriacal melancholy� with �sharp belchings, fulsome crudities, wind and rumbling in the guts�, the patient feeling �fearful, sad, anxious [and] discontent�. Since hypochondriasis originated in the blood and humours, such factors as excessive study or an inappropriate diet could allow �gross, melancholy humours� to rise up from the abdomen and corrupt the brain.
In the 18th century, hypochondria retained a material basis, although nerve theory shifted its emphasis from the body's fluids and humours to its solids and fibres. Robert Whytt's Observations on the Nature, Causes, and Cure of those Disorders which have been commonly called Nervous Hypochondriac, or Hysteric (1765), suggested hypochondria derived from �too great delicacy of the nervous system together with some morbid matter in the blood�. This focus on nervous debility continued into the next century with the idea of neurasthenia encompassing many symptoms traditionally associated with hypochondria, now redefined as a mental affliction. In the 1880s, the American neurologist George Beard confined the term hypochondriasis to cases with a definite delusion of physical disease, originating in exhaustion or abuse to the brain, stomach, and genitalia. Similarly, psychoanalytic accounts emphasised hypochondria's organic basis: Sigmund Freud included"