Currently this page only lists useful references to other sites and documents about the history of gaslighting and how it has affected many illnesses in the past that were thought to be psychosomatic conditions or conditions of ‘hysteria’ before their physiologies were understood . For example,
One of the best articles on this subject has been written and compiled by ME/CFS Skeptic as:
The dark history of psychosomatic medicine
See also:
- Illness as Metaphor by Susan Sontag
- “Teasing out the similarities between public perspectives on cancer (the paradigmatic disease of the 20th century before the appearance of AIDS), and tuberculosis (the symbolic illness of the 19th century), Sontag showed that both diseases were popularly associated with personal psychological traits.“
- Multiple Sclerosis / MS was thought to be hysteria until the MRI was invented:
- MECFS Skeptic – The dark psychosomatic history of multiple sclerosis
- “The differential diagnosis between multiple sclerosis and hysteria is often difficult to make. Many apparently hysterical cases turn out to be multiple sclerosis.”
- Peptic Ulcers – Ulcers were thought to be stress, until a bacterial cause was found: