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For several years Will Rees thought he had a brain tumor. Despite many visits to doctors and specialists, nothing came of it. Yet, deep down, he knew he had “something,” even if the medical establishment couldn’t find anything. Hypochondria by Will Rees is his attempt to chronicle his condition and an exploration of the phenomenon known as hypochondria. During his attempts to find out what was wrong with him – Something? Anything? Nothing? – he also decided to write a scholarly history of hypochondria. As he began the Covid pandemic hit, offering a unique social case. During the pandemic, everyone had the potential to become a hypochondriac. With people dying by the score all around and the world teetering on a full-blown 12 Monkeys situation, every cough or sniffle could have dire consequences.

Rees explores hypochondria from a literary and theoretical perspective. He traces its medical roots back to a description for intestinal flatulence. With detours into the concepts of hysteria, neurasthenia, and melancholy, he looks at writers like Robert Burton, Sigmund Freud, Samuel Beckett, and Joan Didion, among others. The very concept of ignorance is investigated, both as a positive and negative attribute to discovering the symptoms of diseases.

The most challenging question in this thicket of literary references and medical terminology is this: What is hypochondria? What is it, really? Is it a mental condition or a physical condition? Unfortunately, no one can answer that question with definitive authority. It is a mental condition, unless there is something genuinely wrong with you. It is a physical condition, unless nothing is wrong with you and its all in your head. Both statements are less about finding the boundaries (mental, physical) of this condition than in propping up medical and psychiatric authority. This is further complicated by the fact that both medical and psychiatric authorities are contaminated with huge outlays of capital investment. It is in their financial best interest not to have a definitive answer, because that would undermine their authority and with it the dump trucks full of money reaped by aforementioned authority.

This stonewalling proved fatal to a woman the medical community thought was a hypochondriac, until she died and it was discovered she had a serial ailment they couldn’t diagnose. Hypochondriacs waste the precious time of a doctor, at least until they die. Hypochondria proves paradoxical in this regard. Rees writes, “In The Semiotic Challenge Roland Barthes reminds us that the word semiology originally applied to the reading not of literature but of the first and most perplexing text: the human body.” For everything the medical and psychiatric community knows about the body and its functions, there is much they don’t know. And what if a hypochondriac is found to have a rare or as-yet-undiscovered condition? Will they find relief from the medical community, or simply be ignored because the number of individuals afflicted with the condition not be enough to merit any monetary outlay? Is the medical community interested in actually curing people or in the financial bottom line? Something to ask the shareholders of medical insurance companies. Human life is sacred and precious, unless a claim is being denied and then it can measured in dollars and cents. (Rees, who lives in London, briefly mentions the privileged position he has as a UK citizen and hypochondria, compared to those living in the United States, perpetually faced with possible illness and/or financial ruin. “Hooray, capitalism!”)

From Robert Burton to Samuel Beckett to his own life, Rees provides a fascinating and entertaining look into the paradoxical and frustrating world of the hypochondriac. A hypochondriac’s existence exposes the fallibility of both medical and psychiatric authority. They are delusional and wasting people’s time, self-involved and up their own ass, unless they aren’t and they truly have an illness, albeit one undiscovered. Hypochondria continues to evade clear-cut taxonomies and classifications. These intellectual challenges and vulnerable personal confessions make Hypochondria an endlessly fascinating read.