The Bodily Complaint: A Study of Hypochondriasis

Adolf Meyer writes, “In the end our task is the amplification and specification of the complaint, expressed in the most factual objective and potent terms”. Robert Hutchison also emphasizes the importance of the complaint when he stresses the presenting symptom in his treatment of medicine. A patient always comes to his physician with some complaint, which it is the duty of the physician to investigate and treat. In the majority of cases the complaint is a bodily one; the patient goes to his physician complaining of an ache or pain or some other bodily discomfort. This bodily complaint may or may not be due to some physical illness. In Sir Walter Langdon Brown's words, “Some are unhappy through illness, some are ill through unhappiness”. This paper deals with those patients who have bodily complaints for which no adequate physical basis can be found. This condition is now known as hypochondriasis.