The video lesson states that hysteria through history was in part a "label that male doctors sometimes placed on women whose behavior they found strange, difficult, or contemptible." But the record of history also illustrates times and places when adult men suffered from the identical symptoms diagnosed as hysteria in women. The outstanding instance of this phenomenon took place during the First World War (1914-1918) in Europe. During that violent four year conflict, when the armed forces of the combatant countries were composed exclusively of men, large numbers of soldiers broke down psychologically. They experienced symptoms such as contractures, convulsions, loss of voice, loss of memory, and extreme nervousness. As the video reports, the official name that wartime doctors assigned to these cases was "shell shock."

To learn more about this intriguing episode in the history of medicine, watch this one-hour documentary, which includes some amazing images and film footage. You can actually hear the voices of shell shocked soldier-victims in this video. Unsurprisingly, in recent years filmmakers have also depicted the shell shock phenomenon in movies about the First World War. The most compelling of these is Behind the Lines, which raises questions about medicine and masculinity. Another excellent source is Elaine Showalter's 1990 book The Female Malady, which gives a feminist interpretation of shell shock.

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