Hysterical Men: The Hidden History of Male Nervous Illness

“Do not waste much time on hysteria in men. Leave hysteria to women and children,” advised a German doctor in 1887 in response to noted French physician Jean-Martin Charcot's notions that men could manifest hysteria. Micale, an associate professor of history and the history of medicine, University of Illinois–Urbana Champaign, has uncovered a wealth of information that rebuts much of the traditional medical and popular thinking about men and emotional distress. Micale charts nervous diseases in men from the 17th century until Freud. It was only in 1859, in a medical text by Pierre Briquet, that detailed attention was paid to male hysteria, and he noted that doctors didn't see the condition because “they did not want to see it.” Micale's canvas is broad and, while the book has a history of science slant, it is also a work of cultural criticism, charting the changes in acceptable masculine affect, as exhibited in works like Whitman's Leaves of Grass . Micale brings much fascinating information together with élan. 18 b&w photos. (Nov.)