I’m sure I can’t be the only person irritated by the word ‘wellness’. It is the most fashionable of all the current fad words. It seems that everything these days has to do with ‘wellness’ – scented candles, Thai massage, mind-emptying meditation, spas, vegan diets, obsessive use of the gym – just about everything seems to fit into this generation’s utter obsession with ‘wellness’.

The Oxford English Dictionary traces the word ‘wellness’ back to 1654 when it started to be used as a contrast to ‘illness’. But back then it meant nothing very special – just the case of being in good health. However, it no longer means that. It now means mud baths, coffee enemas, holding crystals to your forehead and who knows what other nonsense.

This more modern concept of ‘wellness’ seems to go back to the United States (where else?) around 1957. It appears to have bubbled out of the brain of an American mathematician named Halbert Dunn. He was a statistician for various medical clinics in the US from the 1930s to the 1960s. From all the numbers he collected he cobbled together a book called High-Level Wellness (1959). It was this book that gave the word ‘wellness’ a whole new lease of life. But why did this idea take off? Dunn himself died in 1975 long before the current epidemic of ‘wellness’. So, I ask again, why is it now flourishing? The answer yet again is that powerful three-word-slogan ‘Follow the money’! ‘Wellness’ is now an industry, with ‘wellness centres’ all over the globe. Nowadays ‘wellness centres’ offer an enormous range of services: detox programs, yoga, hydrotherapy, massage, forest bathing, and who knows what else. Perhaps this trend is part of the current generation’s desire to live forever, and never age. A nice wish, but I have to tell them it won’t work. A recent survey of doctors indicates that ten out of ten people die. Still, nice try. And it may account for the current obsession with ‘wellness’.