the.com/hysteria
a fake disease invented to explain women who refused to be boring
means A state of uncontrollable or exaggerated emotion, panic, or excitement, often spreading through a group; historically (and wrongly) a supposed nervous disorder blamed on the womb.
from Straight from the Greek hystera, 'womb.' Ancient physicians believed the uterus could literally wander around the body causing distress, so 'hysteria' was coined to name a so-called women's affliction. The word entered medical English by the 17th–18th centuries and only later loosened into its modern sense of mass panic or unhinged emotion — the womb-origin now embarrassingly visible in the root.
- greek root
- named after the womb, blamed for everything
- victorian cure
- doctors prescribed pelvic massage, then invented the vibrator
- diagnosis dropped
- only removed from medical manuals in 1980
- mass version
- can spread through crowds like a contagious feeling
- witch trials
- often retroactively explained as collective hysteria
dancing plague of 1518 — mass hysteria in strasbourg where 34 people danced uncontrollably until some died
salem witch trials — 1692 massachusetts hysteria where 20 people were executed based on accusations of witchcraft
tanganyika laughter epidemic — 1962 tanzania outbreak where laughter spread through a school of 95 girls, closing the school