In 1822 the French clinician Jean-Pierre Falret published a two-part treatise, De l'Hypochondrie et du suicide , which went a step beyond the commonsensical notion that hypochondria involved a moral weakness and declared that it was primarily a mental disorder.

When was the first case of hypochondria?

In the 1880s, the American neurologist George Beard con- fined the term hypochondriasis to cases with a definite delusion of physical disease, originating in exhaustion or abuse to the brain, stomach, and genitalia.

When was illness anxiety disorder discovered?

George Miller Beard first described neurasthenia in 1869. Its symptoms were manifold, ranging from general malaise, neuralgic pains, hysteria, hypochondriasis, to symptoms of anxiety and chronic depression.