perform useless, eccentric, or even criminal actions; to count objects, to
touch lamp-posts, to continually reiterate certain words, and so on.

The victim is fully aware that there are no grounds for his panic or
impulse, but though his reason ridicules, it cannot disperse, his fear, and
the wretched man finds relief in sleep alone, which adds to his woes by
being a coy lover.

An almost invariable stage is that wherein the patient studies a
patent-medicine advertisement and finds that a disease, or collection of
diseases, is the root of his troubles. This alarms but interests him; he
studies other advertisements, sends for pamphlets, and so becomes familiar
with a few medical terms. He then takes a "treatment", and talks of his
"complaint" and how he "diagnosed" it. He has become hypochondriac.

He borrows a book on anatomy from the public library to discover in what
part of the body his ailment is located.

He draws up (or copies) a special diet-sheet, and talks of "proteids",
notices a slight cloudiness in his urine, and underlines "The Uric-Acid
Diathesis" in one of his pamphlets. Then his heart bumps, he diagnoses
anew, and so goes on, usually ending by taking phosphorus for his "brain
fag". Then he finds he has a disease unknown to the faculty, which
discovery interests him as intensely as it irritates his unfortunate
friends.

This prince of pessimists has a conviction that, compared with him, Job was
a happy man, and that he will go insane. He does not know that it is only
when there are flaws in the brain from inheritance or organic disease that
mental worry leads to lunacy; a sound brain never becomes unhinged from