A Body Made Of Glass By Caroline Crampton

When she was 17, Caroline Crampton developed a blood cancer which was diagnosed when a tumour appeared on her neck. After several rounds of gruelling treatment, including chemotherapy and weeks in an isolation ward, the doctors announced that her cancer was cured. But – understandably – Caroline herself was not so sure. Ever alert to new symptoms, feeling anxiously for new tumours on her neck, she worries continually that the cancer has returned.

‘The fear that there is something wrong with me, that I am sick, is always with me.

This personal experience becomes the starting point for an exploration of the history of hypochondria or health anxiety, from the ancient Greeks to the modern wellness industry. It is, she says, ‘an ancient condition which makes itself anew for every age'.

In this first episode, Caroline tells the extraordinary story of the ‘people made of glass'. From the 14th to the 17th Century, people who felt fragile and extremely brittle believed that their internal organs had literally been transformed into glass.

'One report from the early 17th Century by a French royal physician concerned a Parisian glassmaker who suffered from a form of the delusion focused on the buttocks. He supposedly went around with a small cushion fastened to his behind at all times, in case they broke when he sat down. He was apparently cured by a doctor who beat him severely...'

Caroline Crampton is a writer and critic whose work has appeared in The Guardian, Granta, the New Humanist, and the Spectator. Her previous book The Way to the Sea (2019) is a journey down the Thames from source to sea. She hosts the Shedunnit podcast about detective fiction.

The reader, Tuppence Middleton, is a British actress known for her stage and screen roles in Downton Abbey, The Imitation Game, His Dark Materials and The Motive and the Cue.

Find all the latest books at the bottom of the Sounds homepage. Just click on the Books collection.

Produced and abridged by Elizabeth Burke and Heather Dempsey

Executive Producer: Jo Rowntree

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4

This is an EcoAudio certified production.

Caroline Crampton explores the cultural history of hypochondria. Tuppence Middleton reads.

Caroline Crampton explores the history of hypochondria, drawing together cultural history and moving personal memoir. Read by Tuppence Middleton.

When she was 17, Caroline Crampton developed a blood cancer which was diagnosed when a tumour appeared on her neck. After several rounds of gruelling treatment, including chemotherapy and weeks in an isolation ward, the doctors announced that her cancer was cured. But – understandably – Caroline herself was not so sure. Ever alert to new symptoms, feeling anxiously for new tumours on her neck, she worries continually that the cancer has returned.

‘The fear that there is something wrong with me, that I am sick, is always with me.

This personal experience becomes the starting point for an exploration of the history of hypochondria or health anxiety, from the ancient Greeks to the modern wellness industry. It is, she says, ‘an ancient condition which makes itself anew for every age'.

In this episode, we learn about the earliest understandings of hypochondria from the time of Hippocrates, and how the word at first referred to a physical region of the body, the abdomen.

'A strong cultural association remains between the digestive system and our emotional state: we still talk of having a ‘gut feeling'. This sense of an instinctive understanding rooted in the abdomen, separate from more ‘rational' knowledge in the brain, is a survivor from this era of medical theory. It's also a key component of hypochondria. I can know logically that my every shiver is not the arrival of a fever, nor my every sneeze an indication that I have caught a deadly virus, but when the anxiety overrides this rational certainty, it can feel like a different part of me is in charge. It's in the stomach region that I experience those ungovernable lurches of fear, as if that is still where the hypochondria rests within me, just as those Ancient Greek practitioners believed.'

Caroline Crampton is a writer and critic whose work has appeared in The Guardian, Granta, the New Humanist, and the Spectator. Her previous book The Way to the Sea (2019) is a journey down the Thames from source to sea. She hosts the Shedunnit podcast about detective fiction.

The reader, Tuppence Middleton, is a British actress known for her stage and screen roles in Downton Abbey, The Imitation Game, His Dark Materials and The Motive and the Cue.

Find all the latest books at the bottom of the Sounds homepage. Just click on the Books collection.

Produced and abridged by Elizabeth Burke and Heather Dempsey

Executive Producer: Jo Rowntree

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4

This is an EcoAudio certified production.

Caroline Crampton explores the cultural history of hypochondria. Tuppence Middleton reads.

Caroline Crampton explores the history of hypochondria, drawing together cultural history and moving personal memoir. Read by Tuppence Middleton.

When she was 17, Caroline Crampton developed a blood cancer which was diagnosed when a tumour appeared on her neck. After several rounds of gruelling treatment, including chemotherapy and weeks in an isolation ward, the doctors announced that her cancer was cured. But – understandably – Caroline herself was not so sure. Ever alert to new symptoms, feeling anxiously for new tumours on her neck, she worries continually that the cancer has returned.

‘The fear that there is something wrong with me, that I am sick, is always with me.

This personal experience becomes the starting point for an exploration of the history of hypochondria or health anxiety, from the ancient Greeks to the modern wellness industry. It is, she says, ‘an ancient condition which makes itself anew for every age'.

In this episode, Caroline charts the rise and rise of the ‘quack', as fraudulent healers offered seductive alternative treatments to hypochondriacs through the ages – at a price. She tells the stories of some ingenious 18th century businessmen whose remedies promised to heal all ills:

'Joshua Ward, a pickle seller from the banks of the Thames, made a name for himself in France by selling a pair of remedies that he claimed could cure all human ailments. On his return to England, he successfully masqueraded as the Member of Parliament for Marlborough for several months, before being discovered and struck from the records of the House of Commons. He fell back on his medical wheeze, and quickly turned ‘Ward's Pill and Drop' into a city-wide sensation, even though its main effect on a sick person was to make them much sicker.'

Caroline Crampton is a writer and critic whose work has appeared in The Guardian, Granta, the New Humanist, and the Spectator. Her previous book The Way to the Sea (2019) is a journey down the Thames from source to sea. She hosts the Shedunnit podcast about detective fiction.

The reader, Tuppence Middleton, is a British actress known for her stage and screen roles in Downton Abbey, The Imitation Game, His Dark Materials and The Motive and the Cue.

Find all the latest books at the bottom of the Sounds homepage. Just click on the Books collection.

Produced and abridged by Elizabeth Burke and Heather Dempsey

Executive Producer: Jo Rowntree

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4

This is an EcoAudio certified production.

Caroline Crampton explores the cultural history of hypochondria. Tuppence Middleton reads.

Caroline Crampton explores the history of hypochondria, drawing together cultural history and moving personal memoir. Read by Tuppence Middleton.

When she was 17, Caroline Crampton developed a blood cancer which was diagnosed when a tumour appeared on her neck. After several rounds of gruelling treatment, including chemotherapy and weeks in an isolation ward, the doctors announced that her cancer was cured. But – understandably – Caroline herself was not so sure. Ever alert to new symptoms, feeling anxiously for new tumours on her neck, she worries continually that the cancer has returned.

‘The fear that there is something wrong with me, that I am sick, is always with me.

This personal experience becomes the starting point for an exploration of the history of hypochondria or health anxiety, from the ancient Greeks to the modern wellness industry. It is, she says, ‘an ancient condition which makes itself anew for every age'.

In this episode, Caroline explores the psychology of hypochondria through the lives and writings of Kant, Freud and the poet Philip Larkin – who was one of literature's most famous hypochondriacs. She concludes:

'It seems to me that, at its simplest, hypochondria is a fear of death. In this sense, hypochondria is merely the human condition with the comforting fictions stripped away.'

Caroline Crampton is a writer and critic whose work has appeared in The Guardian, Granta, the New Humanist, and the Spectator. Her previous book The Way to the Sea (2019) is a journey down the Thames from source to sea. She hosts the Shedunnit podcast about detective fiction.

The reader, Tuppence Middleton, is a British actress known for her stage and screen roles in Downton Abbey, The Imitation Game, His Dark Materials and The Motive and the Cue.

Find all the latest books at the bottom of the Sounds homepage. Just click on the Books collection.

Produced and abridged by Elizabeth Burke and Heather Dempsey

Executive Producer: Jo Rowntree

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4

This is an EcoAudio certified production.

Caroline Crampton explores the cultural history of hypochondria. Tuppence Middleton reads.

Caroline Crampton explores the history of hypochondria, drawing together cultural history and moving personal memoir. Read by Tuppence Middleton.

When she was 17, Caroline Crampton developed a blood cancer which was diagnosed when a tumour appeared on her neck. After several rounds of gruelling treatment, including chemotherapy and weeks in an isolation ward, the doctors announced that her cancer was cured. But – understandably – Caroline herself was not so sure. Ever alert to new symptoms, feeling anxiously for new tumours on her neck, she worries continually that the cancer has returned.

‘The fear that there is something wrong with me, that I am sick, is always with me.

This personal experience becomes the starting point for an exploration of the history of hypochondria or health anxiety, from the ancient Greeks to the modern wellness industry. It is, she says, ‘an ancient condition which makes itself anew for every age'.

In this episode, Caroline explores how the internet feeds health anxiety, ‘acting like a megaphone for a hypochondriac'. She tells the story of how Tik Tok videos produced during lockdown sparked an epidemic of symptoms, around Tourette's syndrome in particular. And she reflects on what she's learned in the five years spent researching the history of hypochondria:

'There are no perfect neat endings, no matter how much our instincts tell us to seek them out. During an early discussion about the book, someone asked me whether I would be giving it a happy ending. “Perhaps you could talk about the cure for hypochondria? ? she said, hopefully. I think I made a joke, probably something about how it would make for a better story if I died from one of my imaginary ailments - '

Caroline Crampton is a writer and critic whose work has appeared in The Guardian, Granta, the New Humanist, and the Spectator. Her previous book The Way to the Sea (2019) is a journey down the Thames from source to sea. She hosts the Shedunnit podcast about detective fiction.

The reader, Tuppence Middleton, is a British actress known for her stage and screen roles in Downton Abbey, The Imitation Game, His Dark Materials and The Motive and the Cue.

Find all the latest books at the bottom of the Sounds homepage. Just click on the Books collection.

Produced and abridged by Elizabeth Burke and Heather Dempsey

Executive Producer: Jo Rowntree

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4

This is an EcoAudio certified production.

Caroline Crampton explores the cultural history of hypochondria. Tuppence Middleton reads.

Caroline Crampton explores the history of hypochondria, drawing together cultural history and moving personal memoir. Read by Tuppence Middleton.