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Hypochondriacs moaned with their tongues in their cheeks in the presence of the prying night-patrol. Fevers flourished; multitudes were prostrated by influenza; the pleura played the devil with innumerable lungs. Anybody who was not a malingerer was voted a fool, an altruist. It was true; and we used to wonder which his worship was an invalid, an altruist, or an owl!

Our libraries are crammed with books written by spiritual hypochondriacs, who inspected all their moral secretions a dozen times a day. They are full of interest, but they should be transferred from the shelf of the theologian to that of the medical man who makes a study of insanity.

Rude fishers and uneducated labourers still attribute every phenomenon of nature which they cannot account for, to the devil and witches. Catalepsy, that wondrous disease, is still thought by ignorant gossips to be the work of Satan; and hypochondriacs, uninformed by science of the nature of their malady, devoutly believe in the reality of their visions.

But on a bed or sofa, he is entirely at your mercy, and he feels every jar you give him all through him. In all that we have said, both here and elsewhere, let it be distinctly understood that we are not speaking of hypochondriacs. To distinguish between real and fancied disease forms an important branch of the education of a nurse. To manage fancy patients forms an important branch of her duties.

Gift money should go to cripples and hypochondriacs, not to spry old gentlemen. I would not take it from my own father's estate when I was your age, and I certainly won't take it now from you. I made Felicia take it all." Jack opened his eyes. He had often wondered why Peter had so little and she so much. "Oh, yes, nearly forty years ago! But I have never regretted it since!

Sometimes they develop a sense of unreality which vitiates all their efforts to succeed; or they become hypochondriacs, feeling every flutter of the heart and every vague ache and pain. The Hamlet doubting type is an introspectionist and oscillates in his mind from yea to nay on every question. Such as this type develop ideas of compensation and power and become cranks and fake prophets.

Moliere told the King that he had just sketched out the plot of his "Malade Imaginaire," and assured us that hypochondriacs themselves would find something to laugh at when it was played. He spoke very little about himself, but at great length, and with evident admiration, about the young poet Racine.

Jaundiced hypochondriacs and neurotic wrecks shiver in California winter boarding-houses, torment themselves with ennui at the country ranches, poison themselves with "nerve foods," and perhaps finally survive to write the sad and squalid "truth about California." Doubtless it is all inexpressibly tedious to them; subjective woe is always hard to bear but it is not California.

Be that as it may, such dramatic and literary tendencies have produced their effect, and the popular impression of the doctor is that of a man who spends his time between rushing at breakneck speed to save the lives of those who suddenly find themselves in articulo mortis and will perish unless he gets there within fifteen minutes, and dancing attendance upon a swarm of old hypochondriacs, neurotics, and nervous dyspeptics, of both sexes.

Cullen observes, that "whatever aversion to application of any kind may appear in hypochondriacs, there is nothing more pernicious to them than absolute idleness, or a vacancy from all earnest pursuit.