Before Dr. Barbour, none of Joseph’s doctors had thought to ask him what he meant by “feeling dizzy.” They had never considered that the cause might be emotional rather than physical. Dr. Barbour argues that doctors are trained to be expert disease detectors, taught to diagnose patients based on fragments of information: a fever, an odd pain, a spell of disorientation. But this disease hunt can backfire, tempting them to lock on to a possible diagnosis prematurely.
