In 19th-century France, the Salpêtrière hospital was an institution for mentally ill women. Safe to say the definition of mental illness was not the same as it is today. Inmates could end up being committed for anything from promiscuity to poverty.
It was here that Dr Jean-Martin Charcot developed his theory of hysteria, a word whose etymology goes back to the Greek word for uterus. Breaking with a long tradition of doctors who attributed erratic behaviour in women to a wandering womb, Charcot treated hysteria as a neurological disorder. He insisted men could be susceptible too.
