Hysteria

“. . . during the final third of the nineteenth century patients with advanced syphilis were intermixed with general institutionalized psychiatric populations, which also included many cases diagnosed as severely hysterical. Equally relevant are the clinical similarities between the two maladies. In the nineteenth-century medical literature on hysteria, acute paralytic disturbances are among the most common symptoms. The onset of general paresis, like hysteria, may be characterized by convulsive seizures, double vision, loss of pain sensation in scattered areas of the body, and sensory ataxias, as well as exaggerated emotional behaviors. The situation was further complicated by the fact that hysterical symptoms, especially monoplegias, hemiplegias, and paraplegias, often appear in conjunction with syphilis, especially at the outset of the secondary stage of infection. . . . it appears likely that a no-insignificant number of individuals included a century ago in the French medical literature as hysterical were in fact afflicted with ‘ The great imitator’ in its advanced stages” (Micale II, 509).