I can't stop when I get like this! I can't stop! I'm hysterical!

m_shell is doing a project on historical attitudes on hysteria. Based on the reading I'd done, and what she read to me from the theses of women's medical college doctors, I have come up with the differential diagnosis of hysteria: patient presents with a symptom and a uterus. (Sometimes the patient presents with a complaint from a man. And a uterus.)

Seriously, you read these things, and it's like the State Department's list of ways to recognize drug smugglers (first off the plane, last off the plane, in the crowd in the middle...). Based on the seventy-five page list of symptoms compiled by a Victorian doctor, everyone has hysteria! Too little interest in sex? Hysteria! Too much? Hysteria! Faintness? Hysteria! Too much energy? Hysteria! Shortness of breath? Your uterus has sneezed in your lungs, so... hysteria! Weak back? Hysteria! Fluid retention? Hysteria! Pain in your ankles? Your uterus is yanking on your muscles! Hysteria! Hand turning green? Hysteria! Better scare that uterus out of the wrist and back where it belongs!