Turning now to the bibliographic study of hypochondria, an interesting and characteristic contrast is offered between Huxley, who called himself a hypochondriac, but apparently was not, and Carlyle, who resented the imputation, though it apparently had some justification in fact.
With regard to Huxley,—the only basis for the diagnosis hypochondria in a given case, is undoubted evidence, by letter or conversation, that the question of health is given undue prominence. I have looked carefully through the volume of Huxley's letters (published by his son), without definitely establishing this diagnosis. The state of his health and the question of his personal comfort received comparatively little attention. Whatever suffering Huxley endured he seems to have accepted in a philosophical and happy spirit, thus:
"It is a bore to be converted into a troublesome invalid even for a few weeks, but I comfort myself with my usual reflection on the chances of life, 'Lucky it is no worse.' Any impatience would have been checked by what I heard about ... this morning ... that he has sunk into hopeless idiocy. A man in the prime of life!"
With regard to Carlyle,—it is true, as claimed by Gould (Biographic Clinics, 1903) that he showed every evidence of eyestrain with resulting symptoms, particularly headache. This does not, however, preclude his having had hypochondria also, and in view of the violent and reiterated complaints running through his letters it seems quite credible that Froude's estimate of his condition was not far wrong. Surely, unless Carlyle was merely trying his pen without intending to be taken seriously, he devoted to the question of health a degree of attention which may be fairly adjudged undue.
The first letter I quote (from those cited by Gould in fortifying his position) is of special interest as presenting in rather lurid terms Carlyle's ideal of health. After reading this letter one cannot help suspecting that the discomforts so vividly described in his other letters were compared by him with this ideal rather than with those of the average individual.
"In the midst of your zeal and ardor,... remember the care of health.... It would have been a very great thing for me if I had been able to consider that health is a thing to be attended to continually, that you are to regard that as the very highest of all temporal things for you. There is no kind of achievement you could make in the world that is equal to perfect health. What to it are nuggets and millions'? The French financier said 'Why is there no sleep to be sold!' Sleep was not in the market at any quotation.... I find that you could not get any better definition of what 'holy' really is than 'healthy.' Completely healthy; mens sana in corpore sano. A man all lucid, and in equilibrium. His intellect a clear mirror geometrically plane, brilliantly sensitive to all objects and impressions made on it and imaging all things in their correct proportions; not twisted up into convex or concave, and distorting everything so that he cannot see the truth of the matter, without endless groping and manipulation: healthy, clear, and free and discerning truly all around him."
The following extracts illustrate his attitude toward his physical shortcomings, whatever they may have been.
... "A prey to nameless struggles and miseries, which have yet a kind of horror in them to my thoughts, three weeks without any kind of sleep, from impossibility to be free from noise."
"I sleep irregularly here, and feel a little, very little, more than my usual share of torture every day. What the cause is would puzzle me to explain. I take exercise sufficient daily; I attend with rigorous minuteness to the quality of my food; I take all the precautions that I can, yet still the disease abates not."
"Ill-health, the most terrific of all miseries."