His ridiculous hypersensitiveness made her heart ache.

She remained quiet, for she had learned the hypersensitiveness induced by drink and was fastidiously careful not to hurt him even with the knowledge that she had lain awake for him.

"Doctors suspect that tuberculosis develops genius," a 1940 article in Time pointed out, "because 1) apprehension of death inspires a burning awareness of life's beauty, significance, transience, 2) the bacillus breeds restlessness and an intoxicated hypersensitiveness."