What does "work up ailments" mean?

Question

The following paragraph is from Chapter 15 of The Lives of the Great Composers by Harold C. Schoenberg.

It goes:

... Everywhere he went he was envied, feted, admired. He became corpulent, worked up some interesting ailments, was one of Europe's most famous gourmets (tournedos Rossini are one of his bequests to humanity), and when William Tell was performed at the Paris Opera in 1829 the adulation was all but hysterical.

work up ailments - does it mean he caught (or was diagnosed with or suffered from) those diseases? Maybe developed ones?

Dictionaries say that work-up could mean detailed medical examination, but that's a noun.

Any suggestions?

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

It is an ironic expression.

We are told he became fat (corpulent) and had some unusual diseases. But the author is suggesting, ironically, that he spent a lot of time and money developing a lifestyle that made him likely to suffer from these rare diseases. (He ate large amounts of expensive food, had sex with large numbers of expensive women etc.)

The author may also be suggesting that the diseases suggest interesting things about his lifestyle. In particular, he caught sexually transmitted diseases.