The nature of hysteria

(The Substance of a Communication to the Royal Medical Society, 4th March 1892.) The subject of this paper is probably as old as medical literature itself. Yet the account given of it in our ordinary textbooks is far from being satisfactory, in spite of the fact that most medical writers, from Hippocrates downwards, have attempted to solve the problem. Indeed, a reference to the literature of this " neurosis " is not likely to give one much encouragement in the study of its nature. Instead of finding our difliculties solved, we are at a loss to know how to effect an escape from the tangled web