George C. Grinnell, The Age of Hypochondria: Interpreting Romantic Health and Illness, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Pp. 202 + xi. pound50.00. ISBN 978 1 4039 3408 6.

摘要

As a recently published article in this journal has suggested (Russell Noyes, Jr. 'The Transformation of Hypochondriasis in British Medicine, 1680-1830', Social History of Medicine, online first: 18 February 2011,), hypochondriasis has been relatively neglected in the history of medicine in favour of its counterpart, hysteria; this is still more striking in the field of literature. Thanks in large part to the groundbreaking work of Elaine Showalter in the 1980s (Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830-1980, Penguin Books, 1987); hysteria has been the nervous disease of choice within literature and critical studies for the past two decades. Given the recently increased interest in masculinity within gender studies, attention to hypochondria certainly seems overdue.