We heard her before we saw her. Long, loud, staggering, humpback sobs.
She flooded into our waiting room trailing a flotsam of attending girlfriends.
“She has like just split up with her boyfriend” they offered.
“She like just skulled half a bottle of Scotch an now she’s like gone all hysterical.”
“I am not hyst-er-ical !!”, she blubbered as she whirled like a dervish.

But it was true, she was like all hysterical.
Whatever that meant.

The origins of hysteria can be traced way back to ancient Egyptian times where it was thought to cause shortness of breath in females. The Egyptians believed a females uterus might sometimes escape its ligamentus restraints and slither up into the chest cavity where it would wrap itself with an octopus-like grip around the lungs and throat. Nasty.

Hippocrates naturally ascribed such uterine wanderings to a dehydrated womb in search of moisture, and prescribed a therapeutic dose of genital massage to restore some level of homeostatic lubrication. The Greek word for uterus is hystera which is the origins of today’s expression.

Later it was postulated that a build up of toxic doses of female ’sperm’ could engorge the uterus resulting in symptoms ranging from shortness of breath, faintness, insomnia, loss of appetite to convulsions and in severe cases, even loss of desire for sex.

In fact physicians, in the mid 19th century had dedicated whole chapters of medical textbooks to listing the possible symptoms of hysteria. With such an eclectic index they were literally swamped with a pandemic of patients requiring treatments ranging from cod-liver oil to radishes ( no…dont ask ) , to administration of opium, to rubbing the genitals with dung.
Of course, far more popular than the smearing of poop on the genitals was a little ‘pelvic massage’.
So popular in fact, much of the hands-on “digital manipulation to the point of hysterical paroxysm” as it was called, had to be sub contracted out to midwives.
I guess this was back in the day when occupational exposure had a whole different meaning.

Anyway, to ease the hobbled hands of exhausted midwives worldwide , medical science finally came to the rescue with the invention of a clockwork driven vibrator in 1870. These devices became very popular, as they allowed a DIY approach to treatment. And when the electric vibrator first came onto the market it was more likely to be found in the average home than an electric vacuum cleaner or iron.

Today hysteria is a term coined to loosely describe an acute anxiety episode in males or females. And the days of treatment by inducing the big-’O’ have long passed.
Leaving the only manifestations of hysterical paroxysms in most hospitals to occur in deserted store rooms and staff Christmas parties.

Read more:
Female hysteria ; Wikipedia
Ye olde Victorian Vibrators: Cecil Adams