Hysteria through the ages

The medieval period through to early modern times in England has left us a legacy of a large number of medical records related to gynaecological issues and what appear to be the symptoms of women suffering with hormonal imbalances. Among those records is evidence of how society and the medical profession of the day diagnosed and treated hysteria.

Hysteria caused a great deal of interest and alarm. This is hardly surprising, as the sight of a woman screaming and crying uncontrollably as well as babbling incoherently before fainting was very dramatic and there are a number of historical references to such episodes. For some onlookers, particularly in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, the woman may have appeared to be in the grip of an evil spirit, which may mean she might not have been treated sympathetically by a society that believed in demon possession, not to mention fairies. Fortunately, it seems most physicians and midwives were aware of hysteria, although some of the reasoning as to why and how this happened meant treatments could be very uncomfortable indeed.

There are blanket phrases that appear regularly in textbooks and physicians' notes such as “fits of the mother”, “suffocation of the womb” and “strangulation of the Mother”; the latter talks of strangulation of the womb itself as “the Mother” is a common description of the womb. It seems the range of medical conditions was so overwhelming that physicians of the period resorted to using general terms.

Internal vapours

By the 15th century, the idea of the body not properly releasing any matter that should be released was at the root of the belief in attempting to …