Hysteria or Tetanus?

Abstract

This chapter details a mass outbreak of hysterical tetanus onboard an emigrant ship bound for Australia from London in the winter of 1874-75. Building a historical context of possibilities for the expression of emotional suffering, it argues that the ship served as an emotional refuge, allowing the female passengers a gestural expression that would be recognized by the medical staff as a diagnosable pathology. The epidemic nature of the outbreak, in which patients assumed the classic tetanic arch of Charcot's clinic, is evidence of a successful emotive process, and affords a novel way for historians to read for bodily signs of emotional pain.