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FOR all the 21st century鈥檚 medical expertise, societal judgements still taint illness: cancer patients are to be pitied, those with heart disease probably gorged on fatty food, and people with herpes just weren鈥檛 careful enough.

鈥榮 sharp and witty biography of hysteria, part of Oxford University Press鈥檚 new 鈥淏iographies of diseases鈥� series, explores the history of a condition that was once practically a fashion statement, so strongly linked was it with breeding and social superiority. Its treatment ranged from the bizarre pharmacopoeia of strychnine, mercury and morphine to alpine spas and leeches on the labia.

However primitive the original concept now sounds, hysteria has a modern resonance. The tug of war between competing theories of mind and body echo those debated about illnesses like chronic fatigue syndrome. Then, as now, what patients want is not to be dismissed as having something that is 鈥渁ll in their mind鈥�.