Word: hypochondria
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Cultivated Hypochondria. It was the "petite madeleine," dunked in tea and then savored, that unlocked the corridors of Proust's memory. "No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate, than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place." So in Swann's Way, the first part of his seven-volume work, did Proust begin his remembrances. Soon the past was unfolding in his pages: "And once I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction...
...indomitable physical zest. Repeated onslaughts of lung congestion, blood clotting and surgery reduced his body to "a ruin," according to his doctor. Yet until the end, which was attributed to arteriosclerotic heart disease, every one of his maladies seemed somewhat curable, save for his hypochondria. The remarkable features that had been caricatured by such friends as Cocteau and Picasso -bull-fiddle nose, guitar-like ears, pince-nez, natty mustache-remained mobile and alert. Stravinsky carried on with the conversational crowds he loved so well, often speaking to one guest in French, another in English, or in Russian to his wife...
...findings show that hypochondria, or "high body concern," one of the most common neuroses of the elderly, can often be cured. According to Dr. Ewald Busse, director of the Duke study center, if a man's family "keeps criticizing him unjustly, makes him feel uncomfortable, unwanted, he may retreat into an imaginary illness as a way of saying, 'Don't make things harder...