This paper is history on the small and intimate scale. It is the story of one individual’s search for a cure for the disease, or diseases, which plagued him for much of his life. His name was Aelius Aristides, sometimes referred to as the classical world’s best known hypochondriac, and this is his story, at least insofar as his search for a cure for his various ailments, whether imaginary or not. Aristides did not reject the medicine of his day - he was advised by a retinue of doctors - he simply preferred the medical opinion of various healing deities as revealed to him in dreams and expected his human medical advisers to carry out the god’s commands.