HYSTERIA: THE MONSTER IN YOUR WOMB

The A to Z guide of sexual history presents H, for Hysteria

By CAMERON KING

Basically, crazy women need more orgasms. Pretty much anytime before 1950, if a woman was being a bit troublesome, she could be frog-marched down to the doctor who would administer an orgasm, then send her home with wet between her legs. Horny, irritable, anxious women were thought to have a disease: hysteria. And the cure? Making her cum.

The symptoms of hysteria ranged from erotic to ludicrous, including fainting, insomnia, fluid retention, vaginal lubrication, “voluptuous sensations” and, natch, “a tendency to cause trouble”. Sometimes disorders such as epilepsy, anorexia, postpartum depression and menopause would be misdiagnosed as hysteria, but mostly “hysterics” were just women with a libido and a disapproving patriarch in their lives.

This weird theory about women was taken as read from its first inception around 4th century BC, until the American Psychiatric Association dropped the term in 1952. Ancient Greek writers including Plato had a theory that the uterus was a wild animal desperate for impregnation and if it didn’t get some semen quick it would it would lose its shit, take over the brain and send the chick mad. Hippocrates wrote: “In the middle of the flanks of women lies the womb, a female viscus [organ], closely resembling an animal… in a word, it is altogether erratic. It delights, also, in fragrant smells, and advances towards them; and it has an aversion to fetid smells, and flees from them; and on the whole the womb is like an animal within an animal.”

Read the rest at Vice UK.

By CAMERON KING 2 years ago

Comments