Medical knowledge

“In these cases of neurasthenia and puerperal insanity . . . the patients and their families and friends were participating in defining normal and abnormal behavior, physical illness or wellness. Physicians were taking their cues from patients (and families/friends), and the nonprofessional public was also learning from physicians about scientific definitions of health and illness. . . . Steeped in the belief structure of their time and place, physicians learned to call ‘abnormal’ what patients described as part of their illness: the inability to manage her household, the tendency to untidiness of person, the propensity for foul language. . . . In addition to the physical dangers physicians believed to be associated with every childbirth, they learned from their patients and their patients’ families that women could also suffer from numerous signs of temporary insanity shortly following delivery” (Theriot, 354-55; Theriot II, 23-24).