they boldly prescribe almost everything contained in the Shops, not
without an irreparable Injury to the Patient (article on
"Hypochondriacus Morbis").

This is a more technical description than Hill gives anywhere in his
handbook, but it serves well to summarize the background of the condition
about which Sir John wrote.

Hill's _Hypochondriasis_ adds little that is new to the theory of the
disease. It incorporates much of the thinking set forth by the writings
mentioned above, particularly those of George Cheyne, whose medical
works _The English Malady_ (1733) and _The Natural Method of Cureing the
Diseases of the Body, and the Disorders of the Mind Depending on the
Body_ (1742) Hill knew. He is also conversant with some Continental
writers on the subject, two of whom--Isaac Biberg, author of The
_Oeconomy of Nature_ (1751), and Rene Reaumur who had written a history
of insects (1722)[9]--he mentions explicitly, and with William
Stukeley's _Of the Spleen_ (1723). Internal evidence indicates that Hill
had read or was familiar with the ideas propounded in Richard
Blackmore's _Treatise of the Spleen and Vapours_ (1725) and Nicholas
Robinson's _A New System of the Spleen, Vapours, and Hypochondriack
Melancholy_ (1729).

Hill's arrangement of sections is logical: he first defines the
condition (I), then proceeds to discuss persons most susceptible to it
(II), its major symptoms (III), consequences (IV), causes (V), and cures
(VI-VIII). In the first four sections almost every statement is
commonplace and requires no commentary (for example, Hill's opening
remark: "To call the Hypochondriasis a fanciful malady, is ignorant and
cruel. It is a real, and a sad disease: an obstruction of the spleen by
thickened and distempered blood; extending itself often to the liver,
and other parts; and unhappily is in England very frequent: physick
scarce knows one more fertile in ill; or more difficult of cure.") His
belief that the condition afflicts sedentary persons, particularly
students, philosophers, theologians, and that it is not restricted to
women alone--as some contemporary thinkers still maintained--is also
impossible to trace to a single source, as is his description (p. 12) of
the most prevalent physiological _symptoms_ ("lowness of spirits, and
inaptitude to motion; a disrelish of amusements, a love of solitude....
Wild thoughts; a sense of fullness") and _causes_ (the poor and damp
English climate and th