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All humans carry the seeds of hypochondria: we evolved mild doses of thermometer-sucking worry as a Stone Age survival tool. But the British have created a lifestyle out of snuffly imaginings.

We didn’t invent the H-word (it’s ancient Greek) but we certainly developed the modern phenomenon. In 1733, George Cheyne, an early pop doc, published The English Malady: a treatise of nervous diseases of all kinds, as spleen, vapours, lowness of spirits, hypochondriacal and hysterical distempers, etc. He blamed our whinging ways on “the moisture of our air, the variableness of our weather, the richness of our food, and the humour of living in populous towns”.

Cheyne claimed that one third of Brits were hysterical hypochondriacs. He said the condition tended to afflict persons of class and intelligence. The condition became so chic that it came to be called “hyp”. The writers Boswell and Johnson were among the hippest of the hyppies. The Victorians harnessed science to intensify this morbid obsession. Their medics discovered ever more new health threats – while improved sanitation actually made huge leaps in making life far safer.

While the death rate sank, Britons’ imaginations grew to fill the gap. The early 20th-century author, Aldous Huxley, lamented: “Most of our physical ailments and disabilities are due to worry and craving. We worry and crave ourselves into high blood pressure, heart disease, tuberculosis, peptic ulcer, low resistance to infection, neurasthenia, sexual aberrations, insanity, suicide. Not to mention the rest.”

Studies suggest that confirmed hypochondriacs now form between 4 per cent and 6 per cent of an average GP’s workload. The figure may be far higher. The doctors' newspaper, Pulse, says around a third of UK outpatients complain of symptoms that have no medical explanation. The report adds that studies suggest that antidepressants can usefully treat medically unexplained symptoms. At least it keeps the patient happy.

Hypochondria is generally harmless to health, but it is turning us into a nation of menu-bores. More than 30 per cent of Britons say they are allergic to some type of food, but a King's College, London study found only about 2 per cent are really food-sensitive. The nutritionalists fed people their “allergic” foods, told them about it, and the subjects felt ill. But when the researchers fed the same substance through a tube to their guts and the subjects didn't know what they were ingesting, they felt fine.

That might seem hard enough to swallow but, of course, mass hypochondria also costs the health service untold millions every year – cash that is sorely needed for spending on real and serious illnesses.

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Join the Debate: Read Tracey Brown on Why the Brits need to toughen up

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John Naish is the author of The Hypochondriac’s Handbook (HarperCollins) and the newly published Enough: breaking free from the world of more (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99)