"Web-based search engines such as Google are becoming the latest tools in clinical medicine, and doctors in training need to become proficient in their use....Using clusters of symptom-related words, they [the doctors] searched Google for a correct diagnosis and compared the internet diagnosis with those in the journals....Google searches found the correct diagnosis in 15 - or 58 per cent - of cases proving, say the authors, that the engine is a useful aid, particularly if the condition has 'unique' symptoms...But patients doing a Google search may be less likely to reach the correct diagnosis" ("GPs should Google diagnosis: study," Nine MSNBC, 2007). Again, one of the difficulties with hypochondria is that the person may be occasionally correct, that he or she is ill, which confirms every other suspicion that the patient has had about the medical establishment's lack of sympathy and competency. Some modern diseases, such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and other autoimmune disorders have often been classified as "hysterical" or typical of hypochondria in their nature and etiology, and questioning the 'reality' of certain illnesses with highly permeable categories of diagnosis, again makes it difficult to determine what is in the mind and what is real. Of course self-identified CFS sufferers vehemently deny such claims as made by Elaine Showalter of Princeton University that the outbreak of CFS is an "infectious hysterical disease" like "recovered memory syndrome, Gulf War syndrome, and multiple personality syndrome" (Swizter 1995). When even psychiatrists disagree on the reality of illness, the degree to which hypochondria is real, a symptom of depression or anxiety, or a disease in and of itself further blurs. Some see it as a symptom of depression, OCD, or anxiety disorders, while other see it as a unique somatic disease in and of itself, because of its occasional ability to produce bodily symptoms.

Anecdotally, hypochondriacs have long been observed -- even in literature, quite humorous in Jane Austen's Emma. The title character's father is described as follows:

"having been a valetudinarian all his life, without...

Upon such occasions poor Mr. Woodhouse's feelings were in sad warfare. He loved to have the cloth laid, because it had been the fashion of his youth; but his conviction of suppers being very unwholesome made him rather sorry to see any thing put on it; and while his hospitality would have welcomed his visitors to every thing, his care for their health made him grieve that they would eat (Austen, Chapters 1 & 3). Other noted sufferers in history have been Sara Teasdale and Glenn Gould. These long-standing examples counteract the claim that the Internet or knowledge about diseases 'causes' the illness. While the symptoms of hypochondria may be shaped by knowledge of popular or common diseases of an age and around the current base of knowledge obtainable by the sufferer, the disease of a mentally unhealthy and morbid preoccupation with health has been long known to authors.
Works Cited

Austen, Jane. Emma. Full e-text available 18 Apr 2008 at http://www.austen.com/emma/

GPs should Google diagnosis: study." Nine MSNBC. 18 Nov 2007. 10 Apr 2008. http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=160924

Hypochondriasis." The Cleveland Clinic Department of Patient Education and Health

Information. 17 Apr 2008. http://www.clevelandclinic.org/health/health-info/docs/3700/3783.asp?index=9886

Hypochondriasis." Psych Central. 17 Apr 2008. http://psychcentral.com/disorders/sx57.htm

Rierden, Andy. "CONNECTICUT Q & a: PETER SALOVEY; 'You Exaggerate Your

Symptoms." The New York Times. 31 Dec 1989. 17 Apr 2008. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE4D6103DF932A05751C1A96F948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2

Schweitzer, Mary. Review of Elaine Showalter's Hystories. New York: Columbia

University Press, 1997. CFIDS Chronicle. 1997.

17 Apr 2008. http://www.cfids-me.org/marys/elaine.html