ry one sold a different plant, under the name of this: but
what is very striking, not one of them the right" (p. 42).

Treatises on hypochondriasis did not cease to be printed after Hill's in
1766, but continued to issue from the presses into the nineteenth
century. A good example of this is the tome by John Reid, physician to
the Finsbury Dispensary in London, _Essays on Insanity, Hypochondriasis
and Other Nervous Affections_ (1816), which summarizes theories of the
malady.[16] A bibliographical study of such works would probably reveal
a larger number of titles in the nineteenth century than in the previous
one, but by this time the nature and definition of hypochondria had
changed significantly.

If John Hill's volume is not an important contribution in the history of
medicine, it is a lucid and brief exposition of many of the best ideas
that had been thought and written on the hyp, with the exception of his
uninhibited prescribing of herbal medicines as cure-alls. An
understanding of this disease is essential for readers of neoclassical
English literature, especially when we reflect upon the fact that some
of the best literature of the period was composed by writers whom it
afflicted. It is perhaps not without significance that the greatest poet
of the Augustan age, Alexander Pope, thought it necessary as he lay on
his deathbed in May 1744 to exclaim with his last breath, "I never was
hippish in my whole life."[17]

University of California,
Los Angeles

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION

[1] The text here reproduced is that of the copy in the Library of the
Royal Society of Medicine, London. Title pages of different copies of
the first edition of 1766 vary. For example, the title page of the copy
in the British Museum reads, _Hypochondriasis; a Practical Treatise On
the Nature and Cure of that Disorder, Commonly called the Hyp and the
Hypo_. The copy in the Royal Society of Medicine contains, among other
additions, the words "by Sir John Hill" in pencil, and "8vo Lond.
1766," written in ink and probably a later addition.

[2] Melancholy, hypochondriasis, and the spleen were considered in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to be one complex condition, a
malady rather than a malaise, which is but a symptom. Distinctions among
these, of interest primarily to medical historians, cannot be treated
here. As good a definition as any is found in Dr. Johnson's _Dictionary_
(1755): "Hypochondriacal.... 1. Me