For about a decade I was convinced I was mortally ill. The identity of my illness changed several times, but the fear was always the same: in short, that I was dying; that I had some dreadful and no doubt painful disease that, for all my worrying, I had carelessly allowed to reach the point at which it had become incurable.

My researches required me to seek the help of doctors. Above all, I wanted a scan that would reveal what was the matter with me. But my doctors tended to take a different view – and the greater my fear at their inaction, the more I convinced them that my symptoms were the result of anxiety.

The history of hypochondria is probably as old as humanity itself, but – like so much else – the word itself emerged in Ancient Greece. It comes from hypo, meaning below, and chond

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