The Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates was the first to use the word hysteria, which derives from the Greek word hysteron (uterus), for an ailment that affected only women.
The Father of Medicine developed the theory of the movement of the uterus inside the female body—the so-called “wandering womb”—in the 5th century BCE.
Plato seemed to accept Hippocrates’ theory when (in Timaeus) he writes that if the uterus remains inactive it becomes angry. As it wanders around the body it may close the passages of breath and this obstruction may cause a variety of diseases.
Galen of Pergamum (129-216 CE), an ancient Greek physician from Pergamon in Asia Minor, did not accept Hippocrates’ “wandering womb” theory. Instead, he thought women became hysterical, and could suffer from “hysterical suffocation,” or apnea, when they stopped having intercourse. Their condition would make them suffer spasms or feel suffocated.
Aretaeus of Cappadocia, a prominent Greek physician in the second century CE believed the disease to be limited to women and that it was due to the movement of the uterus which compressed the intestines, giving a choking sensation and leading to a form of epilepsy.
So in the seven centuries between Hippocrates and Galen, the theory of the “wandering womb” had evolved into the belief that hysteria was caused by the local suffocation of the uterus and not the wandering of it.
In the study Women And Hysteria In The History Of Mental Health (Cecilia Tasca, Mariangela Rapetti, Mauro Giovanni Carta, Bianca Fadda) it is mentioned that before the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates used the term hysteria, the Egyptians had found a mental disorder only attributed to women. The Kahun Papyrus from 1900 BCE describes a disorder that is undoubtedly hysteria. It identifies the cause of hysterical disorders as spontaneous movements of the uterus within the female body.
In the Eber Papyrus (1600 BCE) the oldest medical document containing references to depressive syndromes, traditional symptoms of hysteria are described as stiffening and twitching phases of muscle activities and the sense of suffocation and imminent death. This was later described by Sigmund Freud as “globus histericus”.
In the Eber Papyrus it is indicated that the therapeutic measures taken were dependent on the position of the uterus, so that it would return to its natural position. If the uterus had moved upwards, the remedy was to placing foul-smelling and bitter substances near the woman’s mouth and nostrils, while sweet-scented ones were placed near her vagina. If the uterus had lowered, the document recommends placing the acrid substances near her vagina and the perfumed ones near her mouth and nostrils.
According to mythology, Melampus was an ancient Greek physician and seer, a Greek prototype of a shaman, who is supposed to have lived at the dawn of the Mycenaean era, around 1600 BCE. Herodotus credits him as the introducer of the worship of Dionysus and the creator of an entire school of magic healers known as the Melampodians.
Melampus became the ruler of Argos after curing the daughters of Proetus, king of Tiryns, of insanity. At Argos, he was held to be the first priest of Dionysus and the originator of mysterious customs at ecstatic festivals and ceremonies of atonement.
According to the myth, Lysippe, Iphinoe and Iphianassa, the daughters of Proetus, were seized with manic madness because they hated the phallus. They fled to the mountains, but the madness was spreading to other women of Argos.
Melampus promised to cure the women, if the king would give him two thirds of the kingdom, one third for himself and the other for his brother Bias. The king agreed and so Melampus chased the insane virgins through the woods and trapped them in a cave deep inside the mountains of Arcadia. There he healed them of their madness with sacred baths and the use of a herb called Helleborus niger (hellebore), which has sedative properties. He then urged them to have sex with young and strong men. The women were healed and recovered their sanity.
This is how the idea of a female madness related to the lack of a normal sexual life originated. Plato, in Timaeus, argues that the uterus is sad and unfortunate when it does not join with the male and does not give birth. Aristotle and Hippocrates were of the same opinion.
Hippocrates is the first to use the term hysteria. The ancient Greek physician provides a good description of hysteria, which is clearly distinguished from epilepsy. Hippocrates notes the difference between the compulsive movements of epilepsy, caused by a brain disorder, and those of hysteria due to the abnormal movements of the uterus in the body.
Then he explains the idea of a restless uterus that moves around the body and identifies the cause of the indisposition as poisonous stagnant humors (juices) which, due to an inadequate sexual life, have never been expelled. Hippocrates asserts that a woman’s body is physiologically cold and wet and hence prone to putrefaction of the humors (as opposed to the dry and warm male body). For this reason, the uterus is prone to get sick, especially if it is deprived of the benefits of sex and procreation, which, widening a woman’s canals, promote the cleansing of the body.
Hippocrates goes further to note that, especially in virgins, widows, single or sterile women, the unsatisfied wandering uterus produces toxic fumes and as it wanders around the body causes various kinds of disorders such as anxiety, sense of suffocation, tremors, and sometimes even convulsions and paralysis.
Hippocrates suggests that when hysteria is recognized, affected women should not only partake in sexual activity, but also attempt to cure themselves with acrid or fragrant fumigation of the face and genitals, to push the uterus back to its natural place inside the body.
Galen was a later ancient Greek physician whose theories on hysteria are comparable to those of Hippocrates. Furthermore Galen says of hysteria that it has several symptoms and hysterical events. In his work In Hippocratis librum de humoribus, Galen criticizes Hippocrates saying that “Ancient Greek physicians and philosophers have called this disease hysteria from the name of the uterus, that organ given by nature to women so that they might conceive. I have examined many hysterical women, some stuporous, others with anxiety attacks […]: the disease manifests itself with different symptoms, but always refers to the uterus.”
Galen’s treatments for hysteria consisted of purges, administrations of hellebore, mint, laudanum, belladonna extract, valerian and other herbs, and also getting married or repressing stimuli that could excite a young woman.
Soranus of Ephesus, an ancient Greek physician (c. 1st half of 2nd century CE) who practiced in Alexandria and Rome, revolutionized the cures for hysteria. He wrote a treatise on women’s diseases and is considered the founder of scientific gynecology and obstetrics.
Soranus argued that women’s disorders arise from the toils of procreation, therefore their recovery is achieved with sexual abstinence. He further argued that perpetual virginity is the women’s ideal condition. Fumigations, cataplasms and compressions are ineffectual, he believed. Instead, the hysterical body should be treated with care: hot baths, massages and exercise are the best preventatives of such women’s diseases.
