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A review by hannahstohelit
A Body Made of Glass: A Cultural History of Hypochondria by Caroline Crampton
medium-paced
4.0
I read this book upon seeing recommendations for it, rather than because Crampton's other gig is hosting the excellent Shedunnit podcast. It's not usually the kind of thing that tends to work for me- this kind of "cultural history" of a phenomenon, combined with authorial memoir, can often feel self-indulgent, cherry-picked, surface-level... just not my preferred genre.
In the end, while I still think this wasn't exactly my kind of book, I think that Crampton was able to avoid many of the pitfalls that make this kind of thing not really my speed. Her personal anecdotes were well-chosen and well-placed, and didn't feel obtrusive on the story she was trying to tell. The analysis was largely well-written and thoughtful, and brought up some interesting points. Overall definitely an enjoyable read. That said, I'd be lying if I said that some of my overall frustrations with this sort of genre- books about an intangible phenomenon with no real boundaries, told from a very specific cultural lens- were totally overcome. To Crampton's credit, the topics she chose were all well justified and well explained, but I occasionally had the usual feeling I get when reading these sorts of books that if a particular chosen topic is REALLY interesting, I'd usually want to read about it at more length than in a short passage in a book like this, and if it isn't, then, well, it isn't. Who was included as an example of a particular phenomenon also felt somewhat arbitrary, if not any less interesting for that. (I will say that I was surprised that, while Crampton included a mention of the writer Leslie Jamison, there was no mention of Jamison's fantastic article about Morgellon's/delusional parasitosis, a whole organization of people with the same issue as Jamison.)
I think that one thing that surprised me was that it felt like there was a major lacuna/blind spot- despite the fact that the book so well delineates how many people with hypochondria/health anxiety are basing this on real substantive concerns, and especially cast a lens on how women's health issues could be explained away as "hysteria," it didn't really grapple at all with the borderline of that, where people think that they may be sick and are treated as hypochondriacs, even if they might not be. I don't usually criticize books for what they don't have, but given the parameters of the discussion I was genuinely surprised that things like ME/CFS and long COVID (and, more generally, reactions to COVID) weren't included, given the complexities of the situations and discussions about them in the context of stereotypes about hypochondria, impact on various populations, and ambiguity in diagnosis that can cause many people to believe that sufferers of ME/CFS, for example, are hypochondriacs (as the relative of a sufferer this is something I think about a lot). Crampton could have chosen not to include this for any number of reasons and it is, again, not so much a flaw as a lacuna, but I found the exclusion interesting especially in the context of the early chapters, which are all about people in ancient times describing their feelings of sickness and the anxiety that they caused. One thing that is relatively unspoken here is that we don't technically know that these people weren't actually sick! We know (as Crampton illustrated this well) that diagnosis of things which could not be physically seen or touched was often difficult to impossible in these eras, and I would think that these kinds of illnesses are something that is not only very culturally relevant (discourse about this is broad ranging, but from a literary perspective the fantasy writer Susanna Clarke has written about her own ME/CFS and its impact on her writing, for example) but also a modern parallel to these ancient situations- where someone is expressing anxiety about their health in ways which there is still some element of ambiguity in many cases.
Overall a well done and interesting book, and it's more the above personal quibbles about the genre than any of Crampton's choices in particular that demoted it from five stars to four.
In the end, while I still think this wasn't exactly my kind of book, I think that Crampton was able to avoid many of the pitfalls that make this kind of thing not really my speed. Her personal anecdotes were well-chosen and well-placed, and didn't feel obtrusive on the story she was trying to tell. The analysis was largely well-written and thoughtful, and brought up some interesting points. Overall definitely an enjoyable read. That said, I'd be lying if I said that some of my overall frustrations with this sort of genre- books about an intangible phenomenon with no real boundaries, told from a very specific cultural lens- were totally overcome. To Crampton's credit, the topics she chose were all well justified and well explained, but I occasionally had the usual feeling I get when reading these sorts of books that if a particular chosen topic is REALLY interesting, I'd usually want to read about it at more length than in a short passage in a book like this, and if it isn't, then, well, it isn't. Who was included as an example of a particular phenomenon also felt somewhat arbitrary, if not any less interesting for that. (I will say that I was surprised that, while Crampton included a mention of the writer Leslie Jamison, there was no mention of Jamison's fantastic article about Morgellon's/delusional parasitosis, a whole organization of people with the same issue as Jamison.)
I think that one thing that surprised me was that it felt like there was a major lacuna/blind spot- despite the fact that the book so well delineates how many people with hypochondria/health anxiety are basing this on real substantive concerns, and especially cast a lens on how women's health issues could be explained away as "hysteria," it didn't really grapple at all with the borderline of that, where people think that they may be sick and are treated as hypochondriacs, even if they might not be. I don't usually criticize books for what they don't have, but given the parameters of the discussion I was genuinely surprised that things like ME/CFS and long COVID (and, more generally, reactions to COVID) weren't included, given the complexities of the situations and discussions about them in the context of stereotypes about hypochondria, impact on various populations, and ambiguity in diagnosis that can cause many people to believe that sufferers of ME/CFS, for example, are hypochondriacs (as the relative of a sufferer this is something I think about a lot). Crampton could have chosen not to include this for any number of reasons and it is, again, not so much a flaw as a lacuna, but I found the exclusion interesting especially in the context of the early chapters, which are all about people in ancient times describing their feelings of sickness and the anxiety that they caused. One thing that is relatively unspoken here is that we don't technically know that these people weren't actually sick! We know (as Crampton illustrated this well) that diagnosis of things which could not be physically seen or touched was often difficult to impossible in these eras, and I would think that these kinds of illnesses are something that is not only very culturally relevant (discourse about this is broad ranging, but from a literary perspective the fantasy writer Susanna Clarke has written about her own ME/CFS and its impact on her writing, for example) but also a modern parallel to these ancient situations- where someone is expressing anxiety about their health in ways which there is still some element of ambiguity in many cases.
Overall a well done and interesting book, and it's more the above personal quibbles about the genre than any of Crampton's choices in particular that demoted it from five stars to four.