New research shows that hypochondriacs die younger.

The late, great Irish comedian Spike Milligan poked fun at the hypochondriac’s morbid obsession with illness and death, by quipping that he wanted the words “I told you I was ill” engraved on his headstone. (His request was finally honoured two years after his death, but only after a compromise was reached with the local church authorities, to render the Chief Goon’s epitaph in Gaelic. Apparently God found the joke more offensive in English.)

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