ABSTRACT
Madness in the sense of the breakdown of normal behaviour is known all over the world, and in some cases madness is a natural entity more than a cultural illness, neurosyphilis and pellagra. Melancholy remained a major illness throughout the Middle Ages, and in the late sixteenth century it became a fashionable malady among European elites, both men and women. Hysteria made a spectacular comeback as a nervous illness or neurosis in the second half of the nineteenth century, by which time the medical discussion of this protean malady had become more scattered and confused. The meteoric rise of hysteria during the last decades of the nineteenth century was largely an achievement of the French clinical neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot. His most controversial claim was that hysteria was directly linked to hypnosis. Compared to hysteria, neurasthenia was a more 'heroic' illness, because it initially afflicted the intellectual classes who worked hard and overtaxed their brain day in day out.
