#306 – Symptoms
Posted on February 25, 2013 at 12:00 am by Chris
Chapter: Comic
Do people see doctors more often now because they think their problems are more serious? I imagine when a bunch of doctors get together they must have endless stories of people coming to see them with incorrectly self diagnosed problems.
Tags: disease, doctor, internet
webmd is good for that. Gives the hypochondriacs a place to become paranoid at.
In “Three Men in a Boat” (1889) by Jerome K. Jerome, one of the characters read a medical dictionary and determined he had everything in it except Housemaid’s Knee.
So it appears that this has been going on for over 134 years, though I agree it must be so much more common these days when *anybody* can look up a handful of symptoms at a moment’s notice.
“You mean I have hysteric pregnancy??”
“Actually yeah, a little bit, yes.”
Once, I think it was Erma Bombeck, a wife was looking up something for her Hypochondriac husband, in one of his many, many medical references. (when only the dedicated, or rich Hypos had such tomes, before cheap smartphones and the ‘Net) She read a list of symptoms, and he said he had each and every one. “Congratulations!” she told him, “You have a tipped uterus!”