Conville & Walsh
literary agency
The Hypochondriac’s Handbook
An Illness for Every Occasion, a Disease for Every Symptom
- Author: John Naish
- Category: Non-fiction
- Publisher: HarperCollins(UK)/Penguin(US)
- Pub date: 1 November 2004
- Length: 198 pages
About The Hypochondriac’s Handbook
We all worry about our health. Now here’s a wild new world of threats to fret about. Bicycles can make you impotent. Women mostly die the week after their birthday. Stormy Mondays and having a crease in your ear may be fatal. Full moons boost your risk of assault. Then there are the perils of sexual sleepwalking, golfer’s liver, fracture of the penis and Chinese restaurant syndrome.
John Naish is a health journalist who unearthed these tales from obscure corners of medical research specially for this book. There’s a serious point amid the hilarity – modern life makes us obsess so much about our wellbeing it can make us ill. Hypochondria itself may prove lethal – people who worry about illness can boost their mortality rate fourfold. This book of medical mania is a welcome antidote.
The work is 46,000 words, with around 270 conditions, written about in deadpan, snappy and amusing prose, but with the accuracy and referencing to tell the reader that, yes, it’s all real. The entries are in chapters covering subjects such as home life, sex, food and drink, work, sport and pets.
It appeals to the legions of health obsessives who keep magazine-sellers’ health shelves groaning. It’s a perfect gift for everyone whose partner stuffs the bathroom cabinet with pills and potions. It is also a must for the millions who work in the world’s largest service industry – doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals.
Naish has completed the British and Commonwealth version, which HarperCollins publishes for the Christmas market on November 1. He is currently finishing a substantially revised edition for Penguin in America and has also researched a new tranche of German, Swiss and Austrian content for the German language version, being published by Rowohlt.
About the Author
John Naish was a bookie’s boy and factory hand, played in rock bands and lived the long-haired bikie life before he finally got an English and Philosophy degree and fell into health journalism. He has written for the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mirror, and became The Times motoring editor, despite not having a car licence. He helped to launch some of Britain’s first corporate websites, but walked away from the dotcom boom. His first two books were THE HYPOCHONDRIAC’S HANDBOOK and PUT WHAT WHERE? (2,000 Years of Bizarre Sex Advice). He is a contributing editor of The Times and is writing a new health series commissioned by BBC television.