(单词翻译:单击)
When you hear the term 'hysteria', you might think of a frenzied group of people — like shoppers on Black Friday.
当听到‘癔病’这个术语时,你或许会想到一群发疯的人—就像是黑色星期五的购物者一样 。
But for a long time that word meant something different.
但是长时间以来这个词有着不同的含义 。
Hysteria was a mental condition attributed specifically to uterus problems,
癔病曾是一种精神状况,尤其和子宫问题有关,
and it became a sort of catch-all diagnosis for any women's health problems doctors couldn't figure out.
并且癔病成为了一种笼统的诊断,当医生们无法对女性的健康问题确诊时,就称患者是患上了癔病 。
The term — which even came from the Greek word for uterus — was coined by the physician Hippocrates around 500 BCE.
该术语源于希腊语子宫,是公元前约500年由内科医生希波克拉底杜撰的 。
But it was acknowledged as far back as in Ancient Egypt, a thousand years before then.
但是早在此一千年前的古埃及,该术语也是众所周知的 。
It's no longer recognized today, but it has a complicated history full of strange explanations.
在今天这个术语已不为大家所认可了,但是癔病有着复杂的历史且充满怪异的解释 。
Including one that said that the uterus just sort of wandered around the body, causing problems.
其中一个解释是说,子宫徘徊在身体之内,从而造成问题 。
Sometimes you're just extra thankful for modern science.
有时,你真的要感谢现代科学 。
Even doctors today can't always figure out what's going on with a patient based on their symptoms.
即使是现在的医生也无法依据他们的症状确认这个病到底是怎么回事 。
And, unsurprisingly, this happened a lot more when we didn't really understand the human body.
并且毫无意外,当我们无法真正了解人体时,这种事常有发生 。
So for thousands of years, stumped doctors wouldn't just admit that they didn't know what was happening,
因此,几千年来,苦恼的医生们不会承认自己的无知
and they would diagnose their female patients with hysteria.
并将他们的女性病人诊断为癔病 。
The list of symptoms for this condition could include almost anything, including anxiety,
癔病几乎包括所有症状,比如焦虑、
melancholy, bursts of emotion, headaches, tremors, and even convulsions.
忧郁、情绪爆发、头疼、颤抖,甚至是抽搐 。
Anything they couldn't figure out got lumped in, and physicians throughout the ages came up with some surprising explanations for hysteria.
任何他们无法诊断的都位列其中,那个时代的内科医生们给癔病安上了一些让人惊讶的解释 。
Up until around the 20th century, almost all of them blamed the uterus.
直到二十世纪左右,几乎所有医生都将癔病问题归结于子宫 。
This might seem somewhat silly now, since we know that the uterus mostly deals with reproduction — nurturing and housing fetuses.
现在看来这似乎很傻,因为我们知道子宫主要负责生殖—养育和护养胎儿 。
But, at the time, physicians didn't really know how all that worked.
但是在那时,内科医生们并不知道子宫的作用 。
So the most popular explanation — and the weirdest — was that hysteria was caused by a wandering uterus.
所以那时最普遍的一种解释—也是最诡异的一种解释是癔病是由于子宫在体内的徘徊所导致的 。
Apparently, someone's womb could just get bored and… move around.
显然是某人的子宫无聊了,然后到处走动 。
It could crush their intestines, lungs, or heart, or create an empty cavern in their body —
子宫走动会压坏他们的肠道、肺部或心脏,或是在身体里挖了个洞出来—
all of which would supposedly cause those random symptoms.
这些影响可能会引起随机症状 。
One Greek physician called this phenomenon "uterine melancholy".
一名希腊内科医生称这种现象为“子宫忧郁”
The good news, though, is that this wandering uterus could be easily cured or prevented.
好消息是像这样的移动的子宫可被轻易治愈或预防 。
Many believed that it was caused by these women not having a regular sex life, or not being pregnant often enough.
很多人认为,子宫移动是因为这些女性没有正常的性生活,或是没能够频繁的怀孕 。
So the solution was either to have more babies or to have more sex in general.
因此解决方法要么是生更多孩子,要么是更多性生活 。
According to the societal standards of the day, they just had to get married first. So real simple cure.
根据那时的社会标准,首先他们要先结婚 。这种治疗方法真的很简单 。
Another arguably stranger cure was to use different scents to put the uterus back in place.
另一种受争议的治疗方法更加奇怪—利用不同气味让子宫回到原位 。
For some reason, physicians believed that it was attracted to pleasant smells and repelled by foul ones.
出于某些原因,内科医生认为子宫会被香气吸引并被难闻的气味所击退 。
So if your uterus happened to wander too high up into your body,
所以如果你的子宫恰好晃到了身体高处,
you could sniff something unpleasant — like ammonia-containing smelling salts — to drive it lower.
你可以闻一些难闻的气味—比如含有氮的嗅盐—让它回落 。
Or you could use vaginal perfumes to coax it back into the right spot. Because that's totally how that works.
或者你可以用阴道香水将子宫哄回到原位 。因为这就是阴道香水的用处 。
Starting in the 1700s, some researchers decided that hysteria was neurological and had nothing to do with the uterus,
1770年代起,一些研究人员确认癔病是神经病学问题,和子宫无关,
but it took a lot longer for the public to catch on.
但是让公众了解这个信息还需要很长时间 。
Even during the late 1800s, many women carried around smelling salts to revive them when they swooned and fainted —
即使是在1800年晚期,很多女性仍携带嗅盐,帮助她们在晕厥时恢复清醒—
the idea being that the wandering uterus had caused them to pass out.
她们认为是子宫的移动让她们晕倒 。
In reality, it probably had nothing to do with their reproductive systems.
事实上,这或许和她们的生育系统并无关系 。
Historians believe that anything from tight corsets to societal pressure could've been responsible for all the swooning back then.
历史学家认为任何东西,不论是紧身束带还是社会压力都无法解释那个时期的所有晕厥 。
But if nothing else, smelling salts are pretty good at reviving unconscious people.
尽管如此,嗅盐还是能够很好的让人恢复意识的 。
Smelling salts are actually a mixture of ammonium carbonate and perfume.
嗅盐是碳酸铵和香水的一种混合物 。
So when you waft them around, they release ammonia gas, which can irritate the linings of your nose and lungs and cause you to suddenly inhale.
所以当嗅盐四散,它们会释放氮气,刺激你鼻子和肺部并让你突然吸进这种气味 。
That will likely snap you back to consciousness, no uterus-adjustment required.
这样能让你突然恢复意识,且不需要调整你的子宫 。
There were other quick fixes for hysteria, too.
还有其他治疗癔病的权宜之计 。
Around the 1870s, a device was invented to help women who couldn't get enough sex in their lives: the vibrator.
1870年代左右发明的一种设备能够帮助那些没有充足性生活的女性:震动按摩棒 。
Widespread views on hysteria finally started changing around 1890 or so, when everybody's favorite psychoanalyst rolled in: Sigmund Freud.
最终关于癔病的普遍观点在1890年左右开始改变,当时人人喜爱的精神分析学家出现了:西格蒙德·弗洛伊德 。
Freud had learned about this condition from other prominent teachers.
弗洛伊德从其他优秀教师那里了解到这种病症 。
And after finding a few case studies, he helped popularize the idea that hysteria was neurological, and therefore must apply to all sexes.
在查阅了一些案例研究后,他帮助普及了癔病病理:癔病是一种神经学疾病,因此不论男女都可能患这种疾病 。
But then, in true Freud fashion, he suggested it was caused by someone not having a mature enough libido,
但是在弗洛伊德观点中,他提出这种疾病是由于性欲不够成熟所导致的,
which led to them not having enough sex. Which is also just not a thing.
这又回到了性生活不够这一点上 。这种想法还是不在点上 。
Although most people abandoned the uterus idea after that point, hysteria didn't really fall out of pop culture — at least in the West — until 1980.
虽然那是之后,多数人抛弃了子宫的想法,但是癔病没有从流行文化中摆脱—至少在西方是如此—直到1980年 。
Then, it was removed from the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
然后癔病被移出《 精神疾病诊断与统计手册; 精神疾病诊断与评估手册(第三版)》 。
The DSM is the manual clinicians use to guide their diagnoses, so once hysteria was out, it was no longer considered an 'official' condition.
DSM是临床医生用于指导诊断的手册,因此癔病一旦被移出该手册,其就不再被认为是一种“官方”疾病 。
Today, many of the symptoms traditionally associated with hysteria are linked to things like clinical anxiety or depression instead.
今天,许多传统意义上和癔病相关的症状其实都和其他疾病相联系,比如临床性焦虑或抑郁症 。
And hysteria got replaced by a kind of catch-all diagnosis called conversion disorder.
并且癔病被另一种笼统诊断所取代:转换障碍 。
That's when a patient has definite neurological symptoms, like paralysis or blindness, without any discernible cause.
转换障碍是指病人有确切的神经学症状,比如麻痹或失明,且没有可辨别诱因 。
But one thing's for sure: it definitely has nothing to do with your uterus getting up and walking around your body.
但有一件事是确定的:这绝对和你的子宫移动无关 。
Feels like that should have been something we could have figured out in those hundreds of years that we thought that was a thing.
感觉这件事情早在那几百年前就应该弄清楚 。
Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow! If you would like to keep getting smarter with us, you can go to youtube.com/scishow and subscribe.
感谢收看本期《科学秀》!如果想和我们一起变得更博识,请登录youtube.com/scishow进行订阅 。