Women's unexplained symptoms are hysteria caused by the womb
| Women's unexplained symptoms are hysteria caused by the womb | |
|---|---|
| FALSE | |
| "Many of women's unexplained physical and emotional symptoms are hysteria, a disorder rooted in the uterus." | |
| Domain | Health & Medicine |
| Tactic | Pseudoscience / Junk Science |
| Era | Historical |
| First seen | Ancient |
| Origin | Ancient Greek medical writings, revived and expanded by 19th-century European and American physicians |
| Last reviewed | 2026-10-30 |
| Further reading: books on Health & Medicine | |
The word hysteria comes from the Greek hystera, meaning womb. Ancient Greek medical texts described a "wandering womb" that moved around the body and caused illness. In the 19th century, hysteria became one of the most common diagnoses given to women, covering symptoms from fainting and anxiety to pain and paralysis.
The idea that the uterus causes these conditions has no basis in medicine, and hysteria was removed as a diagnosis.
What the evidence shows
- No physiological basis. The uterus cannot move around the body, and there is no evidence linking it to the wide range of symptoms attributed to hysteria.
- Removed. The American Psychiatric Association dropped "hysterical neurosis" when it published the DSM-III in 1980, replacing it with more specific diagnoses such as conversion disorder.
- Legacy. Researchers have documented that women's pain and symptoms are still more likely to be attributed to emotional causes. Conditions such as endometriosis take an average of several years to diagnose.
Why it matters
Hysteria is the historical root of what is now called "medical gaslighting": the dismissal of patients' symptoms as imagined or emotional.
Gaslighting Hysteria is the historical root of medical gaslighting: dismissing women's symptoms as emotional or imagined. The word comes from Patrick Hamilton's 1938 play Gas Light and the 1944 film Gaslight, in which a husband dims the gas lamps and insists his wife is imagining it. Where the word comes from · More gaslighting cases
Sources
- Cecilia Tasca et al., "Women and Hysteria in the History of Mental Health," Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Health, 2012.
- American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, third edition (DSM-III), 1980.
- Maya Dusenbery, Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick, HarperOne, 2018.