Medicine has always been sexist // The History of Hysteria [CC]

Chapters

00:00 Intro
01:05 What is Hysteria?
03:20 EGYPTIANS/GREEKS
05:38 ROMANS
07:15 DEMONS
09:32 NEUROLOGY
13:23 PSYCHOLOGY
14:37 TODAY

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[CobaltKitty]

Soranus: “Maybe the trauma of childbirth is a cause of these issues in women.”

Victorians: “lol you have demons in your womb go do cocaine about it”

[raspberryitalia]

My sister almost died twice in HS because the hospitals would not believe her or my mom. When she first started feeling unusual back pain, they told her the usual about it just being period pain regardless of the fact she'd never felt pain like this before, and our family dr was the one to suggest appendicitis and sent her to the hospital immediately. After the surgery, my sister's temperature kept spiking and dropping dramatically, but when my mom called the hospital to express concern they told her she was just being a paranoid, hysterical mother. My sister's skin turned gray so my mom took her back to the family dr who realized the surgical wound had abscessed internally to the size of a grapefruit. Absolutely shameful the way women are dismissed and left to die by so many medical "professionals"

[alias]

My doctor did mention I might have hysterical tendencies, because they could not find another reason for my fainting. Fun.

[Museofmemory]

In her youth, my mother experienced a crippling amount of pain during her period. It was dismissed and ignored through her teens, and when she finally as a young woman got a doctor to investigate, he told her she was "rotting from the inside", that it was degenerative, that she'd never have children, and sent her home without treatment. She said for years she felt filthy, never clean, rotting. Flash forward to her marriage to my father. My father was the first person to take her seriously, when he caught sight one day of how much she bled. He demanded the medical professionals actually DO something. With much bullying and standing over (he was a large man), he finally got a doctor to do a proper investigation. One microsurgery later, my mother's endometriosis was alleviated and she went on to have two children. Lifetime trauma notwithstanding.

[CityKanin]

”Oh yes, you have a history of depression, sometimes that makes you imagine pain.”

-”No, i was just in a motorbike accident and my knee was dislocated. Thank you.”

[zraashaq]

As a trans man, it literally changed my life to get my gender marker changed. Suddenly, doctors started listening to me. Suddenly, I was getting referrals that I had been begging to get for years. Suddenly, nearly everything I had been told was "all in my head" when I was seen as a woman was researched and diagnosed as a man. I dealt with sexism in the medical field for over 20 years.

[Taizu]

“Is your womb running? Then you’d better go catch it!” -transcript from Ancient Greek prank call

[garakbashir]

I mean Plato's not wrong. When my womb is without a child, it becomes distressed and sorely disturbed. That is called a period.

[OnyxWylde]

I’m a woman of colour, I’m not femme presenting, I’m disabled, I’m autistic and I’m bisexual. My experience with the medical system is ✨stunning✨

[BlackCatMagic]

How about the age-old question of "are you on your period, or something?" when a person with a uterus expresses any emotion aside from happiness. Never gets old at all!

[kudzu_]

My mother, a charge nurse in an ICU for 25+ years, had to go to 4 doctors before one would take her symptoms seriously and not write her off as menopausal. It was a woman doctor who did the tests she wanted. She had uterine cancer.

[FiMilton]

“Well young women often have lots of symptoms like you do, you’ll just grow out of it” Doctors should not be telling teenage girls that it’s normal to be in pain, fainting, vomiting, etc. Apparently losing weight would also solve all my issues. Doesn’t matter that they started before I gained that weight, losing weight cures autoimmune diseases apparently. I have been refused treatment for my autoimmune disease once the first option failed bc “if you’re not sick enough to be in the hospital you don’t need the treatment”

[liskazoek]

I may be "hysteric" according to ancient Egyptiana. The perspective of lying down and not getting back up sounds really good

[manifestationsofasort]

Here are a few of my experiences. Note: I'm only 20.
-Kept being dismissed by psychologists and doctors whenever I brought up my memory issues. They all just chalked it up to depression or anxiety. Wasn't until I moved and found a new doctor who actually listened and referred me to a neurologist did they figure out I have a neurological condition (fittingly, I don't remember the name).
-Wasn't told that I had ADHD for years, and when I confronted my psychologist about it, she said I'd "grown out of it, so she didn't think I'd need to know." No, I didn't grow out of it.
-School ignored and rejected testing for dyscalculia (a learning disability, like dyslexia but with numbers and equations). When I got to my new school, they tested me and I have it.
-Same school forced me to take PE, fully knowing that I have a severe case of scoliosis that makes certain exercises and sports extremely painful to do.
-Dozens of doctors thinking I was lying when I said I couldn't see. They refused to refer me to an eye doctor, and when I was referred, the eye doctors told me I was "too young" to have anything wrong with my sight, and didn't even test me. I'm blind. I have been since I was born. Since my eyes look normal, no one bothered to check.
-When I was 15, I went to the ER in extreme pain. First time I went, it was just my scoliosis. Second time I went, I was just backed up. Third time, they finally tested me and I had a stomach ulcer.
And most recently:
-Went to get my tubes tied (I believe it's called tubal ligation). One said she wouldn't do it because I would "change my mind" and that I'd "ruin my life" by getting them tied. Second one said I needed permission from someone else, like my husband. According to a few of my friends, he'd said this to other women before. Apparently I'm not allowed to make my own reproductive choices. Currently searching for someone willing to do it.

[tatianaleutwiler]

"Trust women's pain! Don't just tell us we're insane!" is a great T-shirt I'd wear to all my medical appointments.

[MathIsMagical]

Hysteria is no longer a valid diagnosis. Now they say “it’s just stress”. 🙄. Yeah it’s a genetic disorder, not stress.

[erowe]

It was ridiculous how my birth control wasn’t covered under insurance when the reason was severe abdominal pain but was cleared when the doctor listed it as to prevent pregnancy. Period pain can be agonizing but it still isn’t treated seriously.

[m.g.]

I literally have a friend who was put in a mental institution when she was a teen (in the 2010's mind you) because she kept saying there was something wrong with her and no one believed her. Turns out she had an ovarian cyst.

[AngelavengerL]

My grandmother for years went to doctors and hospitals with intense pain in her head. They told her that it was just "in her head" or basically psychological and refused to do any diagnostics. She died at the age of 40 from a large brain tumor that they could have found years earlier if they'd just taken her pain seriously.

[saena]

The history is maddening. Also maddening is that the medical field went from "everything is because of your uterus" to "leave women entirely out of modern medical research because men are the baseline". Great video!