Bay 12 Games Forum

The nineteenth century was a strange time.

While I was trying to find hysteria (the Def Leppard song) I discovered female hysteria. The distinction is made in the literature of the period between male and female hysteria, but they're both highly nebulous. It's basically a catchall diagnosis given back then to women with anxiety problems, or malaise that wasn't very serious but didn't correspond to any known illness. It was thought that fluids essential to reproduction at normal levels built up to unsafe degrees and became dangerous in a woman's body while she was under the stress "increasingly asserting itself in modern civilized society" and that it needed to be released by means of a procedure called hysterical paroxysm, known today as an "orgasm," or she would eventually go insane. It was extremely commonly diagnosed, and doctors were required to... stimulate patients in order to treat the disease. The craziest part by far is that the whole thing was seen as entirely non sexual by doctors, who often complained about the procedure, and by the general public; even decades after hysteria was discredited as a valid medical concern.