Contextualizing ovarian pain in the late 19th century—Part 1: Women with “hysteria” and “hystero-epilepsy”

Abstract

Hysteria" and "hystero-epilepsy" were common medical diagnoses among physicians during the nineteenth century. In Paris, L'Hôpital de la Salpêtrière-originally a hospice for the poor and a prison for prostitutes and other female inmates-became a center of great interest for the possible role of neurological diseases in these conditions. At the same time in the Americas and Europe, gynecologists were removing women's ovaries in cases with the same clinical conditions, which emphasized the role of the ovaries in contemporary hysteria studies in France, Great Britain, and the United States. The objective of this article is to explore nineteenth-century conceptualizations of ovarian pain as an organ-pathological substrate for a portion of these diagnoses. The theoretical role of the pelvic organs in these diagnoses has waxed and waned over the centuries, but there have not been many detailed explorations of the associated clinical phenomena. Suggesting an organic basis (le substratum organique) for the diagnoses remains a precarious notion, given the universally repudiated role of the uterus and decreasing interest in the ovary. In contemporary literature, the potential role of the ovary has not been addressed from a detailed medical perspective, however.