If John Hill's volume is not an important contribution in the history of medicine, it is a lucid and brief exposition of many of the best ideas that had been thought and written on the hyp, with the exception of his uninhibited prescribing of herbal medicines as cure-alls. An understanding of this disease is essential for readers of neoclassical English literature, especially when we reflect upon the fact that some of the best literature of the period was composed by writers whom it afflicted. It is perhaps not without significance that the greatest poet of the Augustan age, Alexander Pope, thought it necessary as he lay on his deathbed in May 1744 to exclaim with his last breath, "I never was hippish in my whole life."[17] University of California, Los Angeles NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION [1] The text here reproduced is that of the copy in the Library of the Royal Society of Medicine, London. Title pages of different copies of the first edition of 1766 vary. For example, the title page of the copy in the British Museum reads, _Hypochondriasis; a Practical Treatise On the Nature and Cure of that Disorder, Commonly called the Hyp and the Hypo_. The copy in the Royal Society of Medicine contains, among other additions, the words "by Sir John Hill" in pencil, and "8vo Lond. 1766," written in ink and probably a later addition. [2] Melancholy, hypochondriasis, and the spleen were considered in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to be one complex condition, a malady rather than a malaise, which is but a symptom. Distinctions among these, of interest primarily to medical historians, cannot be treated here. As good a definition as any is found in Dr. Johnson's _Dictionary_ (1755): "Hypochondriacal.... 1. Melancholy; disordered in the imagination.... 2. Producing melancholy...." The literature of melancholy has been surveyed in part by C. A. Moore, "The English Malady," _Backgrounds of English Literature 1700-1760_ (Minneapolis, 1953), pp. 179-235. In medical parlance, "hypochondria" means the soft parts of the body below the costal cartilages, and the singular form of the word, "hypochondrium," means the viscera situated in the hypochondria, i.e., the liver, gall bladder, and spleen. [3] See Samuel Clifford's _The Signs and Causes of Melancholy, with directions suited to the case of those who are afflicted with it. Collected out of the works of Mr. Richard Baxter_ (London, 1716) in the British Museum. [4] _Backgrounds of English Literature_, p. 179. [5] See my forthcoming biography, _The Literary Quack: A Life of 'Sir' John Hill of London_, and John Kennedy's _Some Remarks on the Life and Writings of Dr. J---- H----, Inspector General of Great Britain_ (London, 1752). [6] For some of this background see L. J. Rather, _Mind and Body in Eighteenth Century Medicine: A Study Based on Jerome Gaub's De Regimine Mentis_ (London, 1965), pp. 135-90 _passim_. [7] _Science and Literature 1700-1740_ (London, 1964), pp. 50-51.