Following the Gulf War, thousands of veterans developed illnesses that medicine was unable to explain. Ten years later many of them remain ill. In The Irritable Heart Jeff Wheelwright profiles five ailing US veterans, unravelling the health mystery through their case histories. He reviews the toxic substances in the environment that many believe to be the cause of the conditions and demonstrates why such scenarios are unlikely. Rather, he shows that Gulf War illnesses belong in the company of chronic fatigue syndrome and multiple chemical sensitivity-symptom complexes that evade a biomedical explanation. Doubters have dismissed the veterans' conditions as a psychological fabrication but Wheelwright maintains that Gulf War syndrome is a real illness, consisting of physical symptoms magnified and aggravated by psychological distress. The only way to understand these elusive sicknesses is to consider the mind and body as one suffering system.