ABSTRACT
The term hysteria is not only a very old name given to a mysterious disease but also a word that, since the dawn of civilization, has expressed humanity’s concern for the riddle of sexuality and revealed a scientic (or not so scientic at times) preoccupation with sexual difference. Hysteria’s association with the feminine dates back to the world’s oldest surviving medical document. Dating from about 1900 B.C., it was named the Kahun Papyrus after the Egyptian city in whose ruins it was found. This ancient medical treatise deals with hysteria considered an illness of the female sex. It describes numerous morbid states, from loss of vision, to neck and teeth pain, to inability to open the mouth, to pains in the vulva and limbs, all attributed to movements of the uterus. This text is the rst of many treatises to take the uterus as an independent and wandering organism. In this case, the papyrus recommends the use of sweet-smelling fumigations capable of coaxing the uterus and making it move back downward. Should this fail, the ingestion of foul-tasting potions is advised; they can repel it and send it back to its proper position (Veith, 1965, p. 34).
