A Case of HysteriaMain MenuThe Altogether Shocking History of Women’s Mental HealthThe Wandering WombTheater Of The HystericsFather Freud Knows BestThis Place Will Make You CrazyThe Water CureHysterical ParoxysmThis Lobotomy Won't Hurt A BitShe Must Be MadShock The Pain AwayJust A Touch Of ElectricityA Home For Inebriates And The InsaneThe Inmates Aren't Running The AsylumStories From The SanatoriumAgnes RichardsThe Ladies of RockhavenBaby BluesMaybe She's Born With ItStay Subservient!The Cost of Going Crazy in CaliforniaTill Commitment Do We PartAdditional Artifacts from Patton State Hospital, ca. 1930-1950Anne-Marie Maxwell
The Anatomy of Insanity
12020-04-01T14:41:12-07:00Anne-Marie Maxwell326ac6eff123bb3f77fb517c66299be8b435b4793698022plain9752932020-04-22T15:19:20-07:00Curtis Fletcher3225f3b99ebb95ebd811595627293f68f680673eHospital records, archives, memoirs, and letters all help flesh out the controversial history of the treatment of women for the phantom ailment of “hysteria.” The Anatomy of Melancholy, written by Robert Burton and first published in 1621, is part medical text, part philosophical inquiry. Before diagnoses of hysteria came into vogue, “female melancholy” (i.e., depression) was believed to be connected to sexual frustration.Henry Monro’s 1851 Remarks on Insanity: Its Nature and Treatment posits that insanity is a hereditary disease caused by “loss of nervous tone.” He considers the “proneness of the female sex towards insanity” as arising from “an exhaustion of vital power” and that their insanity comes from a “physical exciting cause,” connected to their “uterine condition.” In the late nineteenth century, the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, under the guidance of neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, became the epicenter of the study of mental illness. The 2011 publication Medical Muses, along with the 1891 volume Traité clinique et thérapeutique de l’hysterie detail how females institutionalized at the hospital were professionally treated with hypnosis, piercing, and demonic exorcism.
This page has paths:
1media/Hysteria_Intro panel_Final Art.jpgmedia/Hscan.jpg2020-03-26T15:03:06-07:00Anne-Marie Maxwell326ac6eff123bb3f77fb517c66299be8b435b479The Altogether Shocking History of Women’s Mental HealthTyson Gaskill67image_header9823052020-04-27T09:11:49-07:00Tyson Gaskill93cb401bee8f73160b4c4378060de7643c42eee9
1media/The Anatomy of Melancholy_thumb.jpg2020-04-01T15:48:16-07:00Anne-Marie Maxwell326ac6eff123bb3f77fb517c66299be8b435b479Democritus Junior, The Anatomy of Melancholy (London: Thomas Tegg, 1840)1media/The Anatomy of Melancholy.jpgplain2020-04-01T15:48:16-07:00Anne-Marie Maxwell326ac6eff123bb3f77fb517c66299be8b435b479
1media/contortsss084_thumb.jpg2020-04-02T13:20:43-07:00Anne-Marie Maxwell326ac6eff123bb3f77fb517c66299be8b435b479Henry Monro, Remarks on Insanity: Its Nature and Treatment (London: John Churchill, 1851)1Figs. 180,181 "Hysteria major" Synopsis of the features and varieties of the attack of Hysteria major (Richer, Pl.V.)media/contortsss084.jpgplain2020-04-02T13:20:43-07:0020190924115438-0700Anne-Marie Maxwell326ac6eff123bb3f77fb517c66299be8b435b479
1media/Asti Hustvedt, Medical Muses- Hysteria in Nineteenth Century Paris (New York- W. W. Norton, 2011)_thumb.jpg2020-04-02T13:55:08-07:00Anne-Marie Maxwell326ac6eff123bb3f77fb517c66299be8b435b479Asti Hustvedt, Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth Century Paris (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011)1media/Asti Hustvedt, Medical Muses- Hysteria in Nineteenth Century Paris (New York- W. W. Norton, 2011).jpgplain2020-04-02T13:55:08-07:009780393025606Anne-Marie Maxwell326ac6eff123bb3f77fb517c66299be8b435b479