Hypochondriac Quotes (9 quotes)
~~[Misattributed; NOT by Collins]~~ Hypochondriacs squander large sums of time in search of nostrums by which they vainly hope they may get more time to squander.
This appears in Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think (1823), Vol. 1, 99. Since Mortimer Collins was born in 1827, four years after the Colton publication, Collins cannot be the author. Nevertheless, it is widely seen misattributed to Collins, for example in Peter McDonald (ed.), Oxford Dictionary of Medical Quotations (2004), 27. Even seen attributed to Peter Ouspensky (born 1878), in Encarta Book of Quotations (2000). See the Charles Caleb Colton Quotes page on this website. The quote appears on this page to include it with this caution of misattribution.
A hypochondriac is one who has a pill for everything except what ails him.
…...
Hypochondria is the only disease I haven't got.
Graffito seen in New York (1978). In (2005), 24
Hypochondriac symptoms commonly occur and may, if no discernible cause for the symptom is found, be due to exaggerated needs for attention and other psychological desires.
In Benjamin B. Wolman (editor), Handbook of Clinical Psychology (1965), 830-1.
Hypochondriacs squander large sums of time in search of nostrums by which they vainly hope they may get more time to squander.
In Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think (1823), 99. Misattributions to authors born later than this publication include to Mortimer Collins and to Peter Ouspensky.
It is said to be the manner of hypochondriacs to change often their physician …For a physician who does not admit the reality of the disease cannot be supposed to take much pains to cure it.
First Lines of the Practice of Physic, (annoted by John Rotheram, 1796), Vol. 3, 297-8.
The hypochondriac disease consists in indigestion and consequent flatulency, with anxiety or want of pleasurable sensation.
Zoonomia, Or, The Laws of Organic Life, in three parts, complete in two volumes (1818), Vol. 2, 112.
The Hypochondriake disease..[is] a drie and hote distemperature of Mesenterium, the liver and spleene.
Earliest citation in the etymology of the word hypochondriac given in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Earliest citation in the etymology of the word hypochondriac given in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Discours de la conservation de la veue; des maladies mélancholiques, des catarrhes, et de la vieillese (1594). In Richard Surphlet (trans.) A Discourse of the Preservation of the Sight: of Melancholike Diseases; of Rheumes, and of Old Age (1599), 125.
The name of medicine is thought to have been given from 'moderation', modus, that is, from a due proportion, which advises that things be done not to excess, but 'little by little', paulatim. For nature is pained by surfeit but rejoices in moderation. Whence also those who take drugs and antidotes constantly, or to the point of saturation, are sorely vexed, for every immoderation brings not health but danger.
Etymologies [c.600], Book IV, chapter 2, quoted in E. Grant (ed.), A Source Book in Medieval Science (1974), trans. W. D. Sharpe (1964), 701.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
