Anton Chekhov was 38 years old when he wrote "A Case History". He was already an experienced doctor and evocative writer, and some of his best short stories, including this one, effortlessly combined elements of both medicine and human nature. The dismal factory town in "A Case History", to which a doctor is summoned, has all the depressing features of late 19th century Russia, or indeed of industrial Europe. Within it's walls languishes the neurasthenic daughter of the rich factory owner. She is always sick, tired and depressed.
Just a brief conversation and examination give the doctor the diagnosis - that of no diagnosis at all. Today, after a few tests, she would be labelled as depression or chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia. But Chekhov and his alter ego in the story know the real cause of her illness. She explains it herself in her last few words to the doctor: "I'd like to tell you what I think. It seems that I'm not ill, and I'm worried and terrified for that reason...I'm always having medical treatment and of course I'm thankful and I wouldn't say it's all a waste of time. I don't want to talk to doctors, though, but to someone close to me, a friend who would understand me and could convince me whether I'm right or wrong."
Of course, nothing is resolved, and the doctor moves on, out of the town, to the rest of his life.
Chekhov doesn't try to give us a feel-good story. But we feel better after reading it. Is it Schadenfreude? Maybe. Is it a confessional by proxy? Possibly. It's certainly real, and common, even in a different time and place.
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