[1] The belief is first attested in the medical texts of ancient Greece,[2] but it persisted in European academic medicine and popular thought for centuries.
In the translation of Francis Adams (1856)[4] this reads: In the middle of the flanks of women lies the womb, a female viscus, closely resembling an animal; for it is moved of itself hither and thither in the flanks, also upwards in a direct line to below the cartilage of the thorax, and also obliquely to the right or to the left, either to the liver or the spleen, and it likewise is subject to prolapsus downwards, and in a word, it is altogether erratic.
This may have been part of ancient cultural beliefs in Greece,[6] but the earliest known written accounts of it are in the fifth- and fourth-century BCE texts associated with the name of Hippocrates.
[10] The idea of a condition called hysteria caused by "wandering womb" developed from the "hysterical suffocation" of ancient Greek writers.
He supposed that the hysteria caused by the "wandering" of the womb around the body was the source of witchcraft, and often presided in witchcraft-related trials as an expert on the subject.