The purpose of the study was to describe the physical complaints and symptoms of persistently somatizing patients. Individuals in the general population (age 17-49 years) with at least ten general admissions during an eight-year period were studied. Persistent somatizers (i.e. patients with more than six medically unexplained general admissions) were compared with patients whose admissions could be ascribed to well-defined somatic disorders. Somatizers were characterized by multiple symptoms from many organ systems, and their physical complaints simulated most types of somatic disorders. Although some symptoms were more common than others, none were infrequent, so neither "classic" conversion symptoms nor pain symptoms were found to be especially characteristic of the persistent somatizer. These findings question the use of a predefined symptom checklist in the diagnostic criteria for somatizing disorder. One fifth of the persistent somatizers had been admitted at least once for factitious illness, but apart from the fact that they had more symptoms and admissions, they did not differ from the other persistent somatizers.