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| Hysteria |
Hysteria
The oldest of these papyri deals specifically with the subject of hysteria. This document is known as the Kahun Papyrus, after the ancient Egyptian city in the ruins of which it was found, and dates back to about 1900 BCE. It is lamentably incomplete, only fragments have survived. Most of these diseases are defined clearly enough to be recognized today as hysterical disorders. A few illustrated cases are cited: (a) “a woman who loves bed,” she does not rise and does not shake it; (b) another woman “who is ill in seeing, who has pain in her neck”; (c) a third woman “pained in her teeth and jaws, she does not know how to open her mouth”; (d) and finally, “a woman aching in all her limbs with pain in the sockets of her eyes.”
These and similar disturbances were believed to be “starvation” of the uterus or by its upward displacement with a consequent crowding of other organs.
Management was by fumigation of the genital parts with precious and sweet-smelling substances to attract the womb, or inhalation or injection of eviltasting and foul-smelling substances to repel the organ and drive it away from the upper part of the body, where it was thought to have wandered. These methods, based on suggestion, are still carried out.
Thus, in ancient Egypt the concept of hysterical disorders was known long before Hippocrates described it under the termhysteria, and the therapeutic approach to this disorder was physical rather than mystical.
