An ache a pain a mysterious lump a strange sensation in some part of your body the feeling
that something is not right. The fear that something is in fact very wrong. These could be
symptoms of illness. But they could also be the symptoms of hypochondria - an enigmatic
condition that might be physiological or psychological or both. In this landmark book
Caroline Crampton tells the story of hypochondria beginning in the age of Hippocrates and
taking us right through to the wellness industry today. Along the way we encounter successive
generations of doctors positing new theories as well as quacks selling spurious cure-alls to
the desperate. And we meet those who have suffered with conditions both real and imagined
including Moliere Darwin Woolf Freud Larkin and Proust whose symptoms and sensitivities
gradually narrowed his life to the space of his cork-lined bedroom. Crampton also examines the
gendered nature of the medical response the financial and social factors at play and the ways
in which modern technology simultaneously feeds our fears and holds out the promise of relief.
Drawing on Crampton's own experience of surviving a life-threatening disease only to find
herself beset by almost constant anxiety about her health A Body Made of Glass explores part
of the landscape of illness that most memoirs don't reach: the territory beyond survival or
cure where body and mind seem locked in a strange and exhausting kind of dance.
