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

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.

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Produced and abridged by Elizabeth Burke and Heather Dempsey
Executive Producer: Jo Rowntree
A Loftus Media production for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4
This is an EcoAudio certified production.

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