Though it was categorized as a disease at the time, modern day analyses suggest that hysteria's symptoms can be explained by the normal fluctuations of women's sexuality.

[5] In ancient Greece, wandering womb was described in the gynecological treatise of the Hippocratic Corpus, "Diseases of Women",[6] which dates back to the 5th and 4th centuries BC.

[6] The standard cure for this "hysterical suffocation" was scent therapy, in which good smells were placed under a woman's genitals and bad odors at the nose.

[7] Timaeus also argued that the uterus is "sad and unfortunate" when it does not join with a male or bear a child; thus, participating in sexual intercourse was an accepted treatment.

Marriage, and regular sexual encounters with her husband, were still the most highly recommended long-term course of treatment for a woman with hysteria to purge the uterus of any built-up fluid.

[12] If a woman was unmarried, or widowed, manual stimulation by a midwife involving certain oils and scents was recommended to purge the uterus of any fluid retention.

[12][4] Physician Abraham Zacuto writes in his Praxis Medica Admiranda from 1637: Because of retention of the sexual fluid, the heart and surrounding areas are enveloped in a morbid and moist exudation: this is especially true of the more lascivious females, inclined to venery, passionate women who are most eager to experience physical pleasure; if she is of this type she cannot ever be relieved by any aid except that of her parents who are advised to find her a husband.

[14] French physician Philippe Pinel freed hysteria patients detained in Paris' Salpêtrière sanatorium on the basis that kindness and sensitivity were needed to formulate good care.

Another French physician, Francois de Sauvages de La Croix believed some common signs of female hysteria were "tears and laughter, oscitation [yawning], pandiculation (stretching and yawning), suffocating angina (chest pain) or dyspnea (shortness of breath), dysphagia (difficulty swallowing), delirium, a close and driving pulse, a swollen abdomen, cold extremities, and abundant and clear urine.

[19] George Beard, a physician who cataloged an incomplete list including 75 pages of possible symptoms of hysteria,[20] claimed that almost any ailment could fit the diagnosis.

Physicians thought that the stress associated with the typical female life at the time caused civilized women to be both more susceptible to nervous disorders and to develop faulty reproductive tracts.

He cited clothing, food, exercise, and education as causes of “Leucorrhoea, amenorrhea, dysmenorrhea, chronic and acute ovaritis, prolapsis utari, hysteria, neuralgia”.

"[4] It was during the Industrial Revolution and the major development of cities and modern lifestyles that disruption of this natural appetite was thought to cause lethargy or melancholy, leading to hysteria.

The rate of hysteria was so great in the industrial period that women were prone to carry smelling salts about their person in case they swooned, reminiscent of Hippocrates' theory of using odors to coerce the uterus back into place.

[12] Rachel Maines hypothesized that physicians from the classical era until the early 20th century commonly treated hysteria by manually stimulating the genitals of female patients to the point of orgasm, which was denominated "hysterical paroxysm", and that the inconvenience of this may have motivated the original development of and market for the vibrator.

[24] However, some historians dispute Maines's claims regarding the prevalence of this treatment for hysteria and its relevance to the invention of the vibrator, describing them as a distortion or overgeneralization of the evidence.

[25][26][27] In 2018, Hallie Lieberman and Eric Schatzberg of Georgia Institute of Technology challenged Maines's claims for the use of electromechanical vibrators to treat hysteria in the 19th century.

Emerson published case studies on his patients, who were often "young, single, native-born, and white" and either had been raped or had a lack of healthy sexual relationships.

[31] The understanding of the field of psychiatry was becoming more nuanced at the time, with Sigmund Freud's introduction of the theory of psychoanalysis and his other ideas surrounding women and their sexuality.

[32] Sigmund Freud claimed that hysteria was not physical at all but rather an internal emotional condition brought on by trauma that could affect both men and women and prevented them from enjoying sex in the normal way.

[35] This hypothesis is a driving force behind the psychological theory of psychoanalysis, as a way to help patients that had been diagnosed with hysteria reduce internal conflicts causing physical and emotional suffering.

Feminist writers such as Catherine Clément and Hélène Cixous wrote in The Newly Born Woman from a place of opposition to the theories proposed in psychoanalytical works.

[37] "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman that demonstrates the mistreatment of hysteria and illuminates the deep-rooted misogynistic systems that existed at the time.