Hysteria was declassified as a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association in the s, and thankfully there is, at present, no legal defense for locking women in the attic and calling the exorcist. But what has persisted across generations is the desire to shame those who challenge authority as disturbed and diseased; Unconventional women who express dissent and passion will still be mocked.
A rabid feminist. A witch. Some people will tell you that they know what it means to be a good or a bad woman, because they understand your body better than you can. Conversion disorder causes physical symptoms, such as shaking, paralysis, or double vision, in response to traumatic or stressful events. Learn more. Historically, doctors have got things wrong and, occasionally, very much so.
In this Spotlight feature, we look at three no longer recognized…. We discuss five unusual medical procedures from ancient civilizations and more recent history. The journey toward medical discovery has been a bumpy…. Though medical systems have come very far, unequal care-giving remains an issue.
In this Spotlight, we look at the top underdiagnosed conditions in…. The controversy of 'female hysteria' Written by Maria Cohut Ph. Female hysteria in the 18th century. Hysteria in the 19th century. According to Maines, women frequently left the douche treatment feeling extreme relief from hysteria and felt as if they had been drinking champagne.
Other available treatments during the late s included water jets dispersed by hand cranks, and one used a miniature water wheel that could be attached to a sink. As physicians began diagnosing hysteria during the s and early s, more women needed treatment, including many women whose husbands sent them to the doctor, according to Maines. According to historian Greer Theus of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, during the Victorian period of the s, as literacy rates among women increased, doctors attributed higher rates of hysteria to the alleged dangerous behaviors of intellectual women, including attending school and working outside of the home.
The edition of the Merck Manual , a medical reference book, listed pelvic and genital massage as a treatment for hysteria. Additionally, when commenting on treatments for hysterical women, twentieth century physician Samuel Howard Monell described gynecological pelvic massage as having positive results in treating hysteria.
During the nineteenth century, societies throughout the US and Europe experienced what historians refer to as the Industrial Revolution, during which efficient manufacturing processes combined with the recent discoveries of ways to harness electricity resulted in the production of many new machines and the emergence of electronic devices. The vibrating massager was one of the earliest invented electronic devices. The sewing machine was the first electronic home device, and according to Maines, the vibrating massager was the fifth, and preceded the vacuum cleaner by nine years.
Around the same time as the Industrial Revolution, physicians began looking for more efficient ways to treat hysteria. In her book, The Technology of Orgasm , Maines presents her hypothesis that some physicians used and developed vibrating machines to treat women with hysteria to save time and to avoid the laborious task of manual massage on the increasing number of female patients.
In her hypothesis, Maines presents evidence that physicians legitimized and justified the clinical production of hysterical paroxysm as a treatment for a disease, and hysterical women drove the market for vibrating massagers during the turn of the nineteenth century. In , American physician George Taylor patented one of the first medical vibrators called The Manipulator.
Because the apparatus was large, heavy, expensive, and coal-powered, large spas and physicians with large practices primarily purchased and maintained the devices for their guests and patients. While most historians agree that physicians of the time believed vibrators most reliably treated hysteria, they also used vibrating devices to relieve constipation, arthritis, and muscle fatigue. In the early s, physician Mortimer Granville invented the first portable, battery-powered vibrator that weighed over forty pounds.
Fate, which takes away healthy, free, young people, never pardoned me once. It has let me live all this time, quite lucid, but closed up in here Lengthy the history, social changes seem to offer a fertile substrate for the evolution of complex innovative systems of interpreting reality, of attributing the causes and controlling events, of living emotions.
A critical study of the historical development and the interpretations of mental diseases may contribute to providing an explanation for the means of psychopathological expression. From incomprehensible Being and therefore mean of the Evil to frail creatures that try, however, to manipulate the environment to their own ends in Freud's view to creature arbiter of his fate in the modern transformation from hysteria to melancholia , where the woman seems to have traded power with the loneliness and guilt.
The authors confirm that this article content has no conflicts of interest. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Clin Pract Epidemiol Ment Health. Published online Oct Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer. This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Abstract Hysteria is undoubtedly the first mental disorder attributable to women, accurately described in the second millennium BC, and until Freud considered an exclusively female disease.
Ancient Egypt The first mental disorder attributable to women, and for which we find an accurate description since the second millennium BC, is undoubtedly hysteria. The Greek world According to Greek mythology, the experience of hysteria was at the base of the birth of psychiatry. Rome Aulus Cornelius Celsus 1 st century BC gives a good and accurate clinical description of hysterical symptoms.
Renaissance At the end of the Middleage, journeys along the coasts of the Mediterrinean sea contributed to a quick diffusion of Greek Classics, preserved and disseminated by the Arabians.
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