Hysteria: The Biography (Biographies of Diseases) [Hardcover] Author: Andrew Scull | Language: English | ISBN:
019956096X | Format: PDF, EPUB
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The nineteenth century seems to have been full of hysterical women--or so they were diagnosed. Where are they now? The very disease no longer exists. In this fascinating account, Andrew Scull tells the story of hysteria--an illness that disappeared not through medical endeavor, but through growing understanding and cultural change. The lurid history of hysteria makes fascinating reading. Charcot's clinics showed off flamboyantly "hysterical" patients taking on sexualized poses, and among the visiting professionals was one Sigmund Freud. Scull discusses the origins of the idea of hysteria, the development of a neurological approach by John Sydenham and others, hysteria as a fashionable condition, and its growth from the 17th century. Subsequently, the "disease" declined and eventually disappeared.
Books with free ebook downloads available Hysteria: The Biography (Biographies of Diseases) [Hardcover]
- Series: Biographies of Diseases
- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: Oxford University Press; 1 edition (December 8, 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 019956096X
- ISBN-13: 978-0199560967
- Product Dimensions: 1 x 5.1 x 7.7 inches
- Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,100,204 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
This small volume by a professor of sociology at the University of California-San Diego is an entry in the Oxford University Press's recently-inaugurated Biographies of Disease series. Each volume tells the story of a different disease in historical and cultural context.
Hysteria is a strange, protean disorder. The author traces its history from the 17th century to the present, though it existed long before then. Among its many baffling features is the assumption of different guises in different eras. There seems to be a cultural element involved.
Historically the disorder has been associated primarily with women, although men suffer from it, too. Its name is derived from the Greek word for uterus, and it was formerly thought to be a malady primarily of the reproductive organs.
"Hysteria" has a decidedly negative connotation. Most doctors have never been able to understand or competently treat it, and have dismissed it or expressed contempt, anger, and even hatred and sadism toward their troublesome patients, whose dramatic and debilitating symptoms do not fit any medically recognized category. Throughout the centuries physicians have assumed that victims were malingerers, fakers, attention seekers, or actors melodramatically putting on a show.
A towering exception to the rule is famed 19th century French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot of Paris, so significant in the history of hysteria that an entire chapter is devoted to him. Charcot was convinced that hysteria was a neurological disorder whose etiology remained unknown. He famously made a connection between hypnosis and hysteria, which is quite fascinating.
Author Scull devotes another chapter to a closely related 19th century disorder, neurasthenia.
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