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hypochondria, it would be helpful to imagine life before medical insurance. Imagine you were a Jewish peasant in Russia in 1903. If you felt sick, you trudged twelve miles to the doctor. His fee would be a goat. Which means not only did you have to walk the twelve miles from your shtetl to his shtetl, but you had to schlep the goat. On the way, Cossacks on horseback would harass you and make fun of your beard, and they might even take your goat.
    Everything about this system discouraged hypochondria. You would do your best to convince yourself that your symptoms, whatever they were, were negligible and that medical attention was unnecessary. Or you attempted to treat yourself. You would try some random nostrum, say, taking a sitz bath in molasses and chicken hearts. And because most ailments eventually resolve themselves anyway, your symptoms would eventually disappearand you would conclude that whatever you did had worked. 1 All over Russia, people would be curing themselves by drinking monkey urine or yodeling with beetles in their mouths. Yes, they were nincompoops, but they were not hypochondriacs. Behind the whole system was the fact that getting medical attention was difficult and costly. Now your doctor is a few minutes away. Your only fee is a $5 “copayment,” which is so puny doctors don’t even keep it; it goes into a plastic cup near the reception desk, for gum and panty hose.
    The second reason hypochondria is on the rise is the proliferation of scientific studies. It used to be that major achievements in medicine were made by solitary eccentrics like Louis Pasteur, puttering around in their basement laboratories, discovering that bread mold could cure syphilis. Their medical tools were a ball peen hammer, six worms, and spit. These days, things are much more complicated. Scientists work in teams, sponsored by universities, funded by gigantic grants. In order to justify their time and keep their sponsors happy, they must periodically issue reports, however obvious their conclusions may be. A study I just read actually concluded that small thin women tend to live longer than big fat women. (Next: B AD TO B E E ATEN BY W ILD D OGS, E XPERTS S AY.)
    The official house organ of study-promulgating is the
Journal of the American Medical Association,
a highly respected medical periodical that gets quoted whatever it says, because it is so respected. I have never visited the offices of the
Journal of the American Medical Association,
but I suspect it is two guys named Murray and Ed, who sit around smoking cigars, playing practical jokes on each other, and inventing alarming facts. “Let’s put itout that laboratory rats are seventy percent more likely to develop esophageal cancer if spanked continually,” Murray says. “No, wait,” says Ed. “If spanked continually
while being fed a diet of Ovaltine and Snickers.”
    No one questions these studies, however preposterous they seem. I am looking at the results of a medical study recently reported by
The Washington Post.
Ordinarily,
The Washington Post
is pretty careful. If someone contended that President Chester Alan Arthur had actually been a donkey named Salvatore, you can bet the editors would demand a second source. But when a scientific study says something, newspapers instantly accept it because it is so darned scientific. This study I am looking at, solemnly reported by
The Washington Post
and other great newspapers, concludes that heart attacks might be prevented by diligent tooth flossing.
    The media are the last and most important reason for the persistence of hypochondria in America. They’ll print anything.
    The New York Times
recently reported that a cure for cancer was just around the corner, in the form of a new drug that can shrink tumors by cutting off their blood supply. Everyone went nuts. C URE FOR C ANCER J UST A ROUND C ORNER, the newspapers said. Medical stocks soared! Poets rhapsodized! Dying millionaires