[Hysteria, a product of society]

According to Ernest-Charles Lasègue (1878), "the definition of hysteria has never been given and never will be". The plurality of symptoms and clinical manifestations accounts for the polymorphism of this disease. From the first descriptions in antiquity to the present day, hysteria remains unclassifiable and defies the laws of medicine. Yet there is a continuous thread to its history: each conception of hysteria reflects the cultural and social concerns of the time. The disease affects both men and women. Nevertheless, the etymology of the concept points to the female gender. The place of the woman, in public and in private, is to be compared with the treatment of these patients, ill in a body, in a gender, in an era.