Ellen G. White and Her Critics

Modern Medical View of Hysteria

Here are the medical facts regarding hysteria, so far as they have significance for the charge before us: EGWC 64.2

1. While the majority of hysterics are women, the malady is by no means confined to one sex, as the two world wars strikingly revealed. EGWC 64.3

2. True hysteria is today a much more sharply defined malady. (According to her critic Mrs. White must have had a case of true hysteria in order to fit certain of the specifications he set down.) In medical language it is known as one of a group of mental maladies called the psychoneuroses. The cause is not physical. Mary may fall out of her high chair in childhood, and years later may be a hysteric, but there is no relation between the two. Neither is there a relation between the glands of internal secretion and hysteria; in other words, the monthly cycle in women, affecting ovaries and uterus, is not the cause or even a cause of hysteria—a statement which, of course, requires the conclusion that the cessation of this cycle, known as the menopause, is not the true explanation for the subsidence of hysterical symptoms, which often takes place at mid-life. (See under No. 3.) The cause of hysteria is psychogenic; that is, it is “caused by mental conflicts or other psychological factors.” EGWC 64.4

3. The spectacular aspects of hysteria—swooning, various theatrical poses, anesthesias, and the like—generally subside about mid-life, both for men and women. As a medical authority declares: EGWC 65.1

“It is rare to see hysteria after middle life; the hysterics seem to flourish in youth and then in middle age they make adjustments and perhaps settle down to be queer or crotchety people.”—STANLEY COBB, Foundations of Neuropsychiatry, p. 217. EGWC 65.2

Excessive weeping, emotional upsets, fainting spells, that were formerly considered part of the symptom picture of hysteria, no longer require this explanation. They may be viewed, for example, as evidences of lowered physical and nervous vitality, and hence capable of being relieved, in many instances, simply by improving the bodily tone. EGWC 65.3