A Body Made of Glass by Caroline Crampton
published 2024
Caroline Crampton will
be familiar to many of my blog readers because of her podcast, Shedunnit: a must-listen for all fans
of Golden Age crime fiction.
Caroline and I were brought together by our mutual love of
crime fiction, and are real-life friends – I have been on the Shedunnit podcast
several times. When she told me she was writing another book I confidently said
‘this time it must be on crime fiction’. But I was wrong, and would never have
guessed: A Body Made of Glass (published this month) is subtitled A
History of Hypochondria.
I’m looking directly at the book today – but be prepared,
there will be more later. Caroline has made the riveting connection between health
anxiety and the revered Chalet School books – a series of school stories much
loved by women of my generation – and has invited me to take part in a podcast discussing
the books. The joy! So watch out for that in the near future.
Meanwhile, A Body Made of Glass is a fascinating
read, I absolutely loved it – it’s informative and thought-provoking. Caroline
has a turbulent medical history, and suffered
from cancer as a teenager. Who can blame her for worrying about her health? So
does that make her a hypochondriac? She writes bravely and honestly about her own
past and her present status. But she also looks at the whole long history of
health worries, and it makes for riveting reading.
The book covers the history of doctors, pain relief and
placebos, quacks and snake oil – with some hilarious stories of people selling ‘cures’
to the unwary. And of course moves right into the era where we can all google
our symptoms and convince ourselves we are dying.
She makes very valid observations and points about the
medical history of women in particular – what was seen as hysteria and hypochondria often
just wasn’t: women’s pain and symptoms were dismissed and for example problems
such as endometriosis were not understood at all. And there was that appalling
period where mothers were ‘blamed’ for causing autism in children…
My own take from the book about modern times is that in
medical circs we are often seen by someone who is using computer checklists to
help, and when we see non-medical staff they will all be using scripts and
computer programmes. I don’t see why patients shouldn’t do the same where their
own health is concerned.
Caroline’s book made me think about health and the medical profession in a new way – I have been very lucky in my health (to date) and don’t worry about it too much, so I have realized that I am an absolute amateur in this world. And I should be grateful for that.
I recently read and blogged on The
Story of San Michele by Axel Munthe – a massive bestseller of an
earlier era, a book that most people are unaware of but one where those who know it will
have an opinion or a story. It is the memoir of a doctor, and I was looking at
it in terms of its bestsellerdom, but he also has a lot to say about what rich
people want from their doctors – he split his time between making money from
the wealthy, and then going to help people who were the poorest of the poor. He
is rather a worrying character in some ways, but his medical reports were
interesting, and this book reminded me of them. (The word hypochondria only appears in the book in relation to apes - don't ask - but the concept certainly features)
Coming to mind also is the nursing pioneer Florence
Nightingale, who suffered from ‘bad health’ for the second half of her life,
and basically stayed in bed: opinions vary on whether she had a serious
illness, or a strategic one. Did she just like being confined to her room? And it’s
not clear what was wrong with poet Elizabeth Barratt Browning, also much associated
with lying on the sofa. (Isn’t that how you picture her?)
Random extra: This marvellous picture is by John Singer
Sargent, subject of an exhibition at Tate Britain in London right now. It is
called Nonchaloir (Repose) and could certainly be viewed as a woman who is
about to tell you about her illness - when she feels strong enough, that is.
As it happens, the picture popped up on X/Twitter, and I
threw out a casual comment (true story) that
I had a set of note cards of this picture:
I kept them for when I had been to a party that was so stupendous I could say
'thank you - this is me recovering from your fabulous do'
In true Twitter style this has been one of my most successful
Tweets of the year in terms of likes and RTs (my top Tweets will always be:
Bridget Jones’ description of Christmas, Eva Ibbotson on libraries, and a comment
on people using the wrong mugs in my house. Ah well. All that literary expertise
is of course very popular too…)
Anyway! Caroline’s book is marvellous, and she has also
linked up all our interests and recorded a highly enjoyable epi of
Shedunnit about hypochondriacs in GA fiction.
She writes on other topics too – her first non-fiction book
The Way to the Sea featured
on the blog here.
And watch out for future items on the Chalet School…
This does sound absolutely fascinating, Moira! And you (and she!) are so right, I think, about the overlap between perceived hypochondria and attitudes towards women - I think it's an important link. I wonder, too, whether today's easy access to medical information has an impact on people's perception of their health. It's all so interesting and it sounds as though it's well-written, too.
ReplyDeleteIt's not a topic most of us think about much, but this book really opened my eyes to the interest and importance: I will think about health differently from now on.
DeleteWhen I taught The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (one of my favourite books) in a course on Classic Children's Literature to future English teachers, my students found the whole Colin story slightly unrealistic. So I took great pleasure in telling them in great detail about Elizabeth Barrett Browning's life alternating between the sofa and the bed, carried by servants between the two. I then ended with the casual information that one night she got out of bed, climbed out of her window, down the drainpipe and into Robert Browning's waiting carriage, married him, moved to Italy and had a happy and fulfilling marriage including a ditto sex life (well, at least I assume so). Well, what could they say? It's hard to claim that reality is not realistic enough. But my point is that doctors apparently often prescribed resting as a kind of universal cure-all, whereas we now know that total passivity is probably the worst thing possible for most people.
ReplyDeleteI recently learned that in Sweden at least, the word hypochondria is not used any longer - it's now referred to as health anxiety, which makes much more sense to me and seems more respectful, since there is no implication of people imagining things, which I associate with hypochondria.
Oh Birgitta we all already want to be in your Eng Lit classes, you're tempting us again!
DeleteMedical views change, and I'm sure many doctors have always done the best they can, but it is unnerving to think of some of the treatments and responses from the past.
Yes, Caroline explains in the book that health anxiety is the preferred term now (which I had not come across): she uses hypochondria when historically correct!
Chalet School connection, you say? I'll be looking out for that, although I have a love/hate relationship with the books.
ReplyDeleteAlice James was another invalid sofa-bound for no apparent reason. Only possible for women with servants!
I had such fun rereading dozens of them - yes indeed a love/hate relationship is the proper response I think.
DeleteYes exactly - it was the rich woman's privilege to be so interestingly ill.... With servants who might easily have had much worse illnesses.
Patricia Wentworth's mothers who had heart attacks when their children wanted to get married!
ReplyDeleteYes, there were some very blatant ones... something from Wentworth's own life, or just a good plot device?
DeleteI haven't read Willie Collins' "Woman in White" but in the miniseries I watched, the heroines' uncle was a great hypochondriac.
ReplyDeleteI have read it, but don't remember. One to note though....
DeleteYes, he is a partly amusing, partly infuriating (and self-centred and self-pitying) hypochondriac in the book as well. He is a typical example of someone who can afford to indulge his anxieties and make them a big thing, because he has money and servants to do the work around the place. Interestingly, he is also in a way in a similar situation to an upper class woman in that he has no power over the estate he enjoys. He holds it during his lifetime but cannot sell it or do anything with it, so you could claim that he is rendered passive and helpless by his situation and takes refuge in his hypochondria.
DeleteVery interesting and informative, thank you Birgitta
DeleteThe book sounds fascinating and the anecdote about Elizabeth BB made me laugh. I love the beautiful shawl in the Singer Sargent painting. I saw the exhibition and was intrigued by the series of paintings featuring this shawl.
ReplyDeleteMany artists of the era kept shawls in their studios and they pop up in different paintings. There used to be a wonderful site full of paintings, which I used all the time on the blog, but sadly it has disappeared. (I'm not sure how good their permissions were!) I used to very much enjoy tracking a shawl through various subjects.
DeleteI love Sargent, one of my favourites. (even apart from the clothes, which obviously appeal)
I had cancer a couple years ago. It does me, and although I'm not a hypochondriac there is always that consciousness that my health could go sideways. I think maybe there's good and bad health anxiety, depending on the degree. Being concerned enough to take care of yourself is beneficial, but you don't want to go overboard with it! I wonder if Mr Woodhouse would qualify, he was worried about his healrh, but also with everyone else's!
ReplyDeleteThat is very much Caroline's experience in the book, similar story, I think you would find it interesting.
DeleteMr Woodhouse! Perfect example...
My own experience is that hypochondriacs are *quite* interested in other people too, they just have that fascination with the topic. I am more like Aunt Sadie in Nancy Mitford's books - 'who so much disliked hearing about health that people often took her for a Christian Scientist, which, indeed, she might have become had she not disliked hearing about religion even more.' (Though I have no objection to religion)