He draws up (or copies) a special diet-sheet, and talks of "proteids",
notices a slight cloudiness in his urine, and underlines "The Uric-Acid
Diathesis" in one of his pamphlets. Then his heart bumps, he diagnoses
anew, and so goes on, usually ending by taking phosphorus for his "brain
fag". Then he finds he has a disease unknown to the faculty, which
discovery interests him as intensely as it irritates his unfortunate
friends.

This prince of pessimists has a conviction that, compared with him, Job was
a happy man, and that he will go insane. He does not know that it is only
when there are flaws in the brain from inheritance or organic disease that
mental worry leads to lunacy; a sound brain never becomes unhinged from
intellectual stress alone.

Books and friends are daily questioned about his "diseases", and in spite
of reassuring replies, he continues to doubt, re-question and cross-examine
endlessly, feeding his hopes on the same assurances, consoling himself with
the same sympathies, and worrying himself with the same fears.

Other folk may be "nervy", he is seriously ill; he _knows_ it because he
_feels_ it. He expects the greatest consideration himself, denies it to
others, and then complains he is "misunderstood".

"Every symptom becomes magnified; the trifling ache or pain, the trivial
flatulence, the disinclination or mere hesitation of the bowels to adhere
to a strict schedule, all minor events such as occur to the majority of
healthy men from time to time unheeded, come to be of vast importance to
the psychasthenic individual."

He keeps a record of hourly changes in his condition, and pesters his
family doctor to death. He goes from physician to physician, from hospital
to hospital. Having been induced by his friends to see a specialist, he
bores that good man--who knows him all too well--with a minute description
of his symptoms, presenting for inspection carefully preserved
prescriptions, urinary examination records, differential blood counts, and
the like. Coming away with precious advice, he feels he omitted to describe
all his symptoms, begins to doubt if the specialist really understands
_his_ case, and so the pitiful farce goes on--for years.

The extraordinary fact is that while he is suffering (_sic_) from cancer,
or heart disease, or Bright's disease, and spasmodically from minor
affections like tuberculosis, arterio-sclerosis, and liver-fluke, he is
probably running a successful business