The seventeenth-century transformation of the hysteric affection, and Sydenham's Baconian medicine

Abstract

Before 1600 the 'hysteric affection' was a paroxysmal ailment of women explained as primarily due to the condition or malposition of the womb. During the seventeenth century attention shifted from the womb to the brain. Then Thomas Sydenham's clinical method yielded a view of hysteria which comprehended a wide range of illness with a mental component, and which was related to the whole person. In the course of this paper the relation of the hysteric affection to witchcraft, demonic possession, St Vitus' dance (chorea), hypochondria and melancholy is also noted.