Jessa Crispin reviews Asti Hustvedt’s Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Paris:
Hustvedt writes that the hysterics of Salpêtrière [Hospital] learned how to act from each other. When they were placed in a ward with epileptics, convulsive fits became a central part of the hysterical attack. And when one woman had an attack, the effect would role down the ward until all the women were frothing and writhing.
The Dish 