A nervous condition or neurosis affecting the heart, often causing symptoms like palpitations or anxiety without physical heart damage.
From Greek 'kardia' (heart) + 'neurosis' (nervous disorder). Popularized in the late 1800s and early 1900s to describe anxiety disorders manifesting as heart symptoms.
Before we understood anxiety disorders, people thought they had a 'nervous heart'—cardioneurosis was the Victorian diagnosis for what we now call panic disorder or health anxiety.
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