There are variations in time and place which suggest that social factors are important. For example, in popular sterotypes the French are still thought to be preoccupied with their livers, the Germans with their bowels. Complaining and frequency of visits to the doctor may vary considerably with social class, and with the type of health care available from country to country. Attitudes and beliefs about the body, in health and disease, depend on public knowledge of medicine and biology at different times, and vary at any time with occupation and education. Medical students, for obvious reasons, are prone to hypochondriacal symptoms during their clinical training.
Hypochondriacal symptoms are common in the population.
The popularity of fringe medicine attests both to the failure of conventional medicine to satisfy its customers, and to the demand for attention by the large group of complainers without physical disease. Carlyle tried the fringe remedies of his time when he subjected himself to the fashionable 'water cure' at Malvern. SEX Men are generally found to be more hypochondriacal. Women are less complaining, although they have more to complain about with menstruation and childbirth. In Carlyle's time medical diagnosis and treatment was more primitive and limited, and doctors encouraged the use of dangerous medicaments such as mercury in toxic doses.