ABSTRACT
Hysteria affected upper- and upper-middle-class women almost exclusively and had been around for centuries. The problem occurred in North America and Europe. Hysteria took on many variations: hysterical coughing, screaming, fits and fainting, loss of appetite and crying. The men of science listened to the women and likely achieved collaboration with their patients to an extent not previously known in the medical world. For several years, Dr. Breuer regularly saw Anna O. Anna described events with Dr. Breuer as the talking cure. However, after two years of therapy, Dr. Breuer abruptly ended his treatment with Anna. Anna O worsened and the crisis resulted in her hospitalization, where she remained ill for several more years. Women as healers, however, existed long before the Middle Ages. The Church, law, and medicine came together in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and executed thousands of witches. Women made up 85 percent of those executed and were mainly peasant women and female healers.
