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Many are the stories that recount episodes of hysteria, and we owe them not only to medicine. To the modern observer, they are a puzzle, involving strange beliefs about wandering wombs, demonic possession, and female virtue (or lack thereof). Closer to our time, contemporary media, as well as accounts in the social and clinical sciences have evoked cases of “mass hysteria” in America and across the globe. Marriage, it was thought for a long time, might be the best cure, which might be the reason case-studies of this illness can be as intriguing and troubling as novels. Against a backdrop of medical and historical materials, we will examine a selection of stories, from the 17th century onward, that evoke aspects of hysteria. They serve as our case-studies and as prompts to study an illness born at the convergence of histories and myths, of medical science, and of cultural and gender assumptions. Among the notions we will explore: The birth of psychoanalysis, trauma and PTSD, the concept of repression, the visual aspects of an illness and its spread in the arts, including cinema.