Are/were 'the vapors' really a thing?

[Cardigan]

What is the deal with Victorian era women getting ‘the vapors’? You know, swooning/fainting upon hearing something emotionally overwhelming (that we might find trivial by today’s standards). Was this something that actually occurred with any regularity? Or is this purely the invention of Hollywood screenwriters?

[Shodan]

I think part of it was from wearing corsets, which restrict breathing. Some of the rest of it might be social expectation. People expected women to grow faint, so some of them did.

Regards,
Shodan

[RealityChuck]

Victorian woman were taught to conform to a stereotype where they were weak and delicate flowers. No doubt they would do something like that when confronted by something unpleasant. Whether they were actually fainting, or just claiming to feel faint to show how delicate they were is not easy to tell. But if you’re taught that you should feel faint at the sight of blood, you’re very likely to claim to feel faint when you see blood.

I have heard that “the vapors” was so named because it was often caused by the stench of sewers or body odor.

[Hypno-Toad]

Here’s the same thread from '05.

Basically, it was believed that some of your internal organs like the stomach gave off vapors which caused or were caused by stress.

[pulykamell]

And here I’ve always thought “the vapors” was a euphemism for farting.

[Hypno-Toad]

@pulykamell

And here I’ve always thought “the vapors” was a euphemism for farting.

Which gives some of those old timey melodramas a different spin.

[pulykamell]

@Hypno-Toad

Which gives some of those old timey melodramas a different spin.

I’m only being very slightly facetious. I was told, and for the longest time I believed, that “the vapors” really was just a euphemism for gas. Never mind that it didn’t make sense in the context I saw it in, but I just chalked it up to old timey people being weird.

[Broomstick]

My in-laws do, in fact, use “the vapors” when referring to emitted intestinal gas.

But none of them are the sort that would have worn corsets and been high-society, at least not post-Civil War.

It’s entirely possible both meanings are used or have been used.

[Kent_Clark]

I was told, and tend to believe, that it was a combination of

A) tight corsets that restricted breathing, so that the woman was always a little short of breath

B) tight corsets that restricted eating, so that the woman was always a little hungry

C) the use of cosmetics with ingredients like arsenic and lead, so that the woman was always a little sick.

Put them together and it wouldn’t take much extra stimulus to make Victorian women dizzy.

[pulykamell]

What’s the derivation of the term “the vapors” in regards to fainting spells? I’m probably missing something very obvious, but I never quite understood the connection.

[Blue_Blistering_Barnacle]

The “vapors” (or “vapors of the spleen”) were caused by an imbalance of humors, specifically an excess of splenic humor. If you are suffering this, I suggest immediate splenectomy, followed by lifelong splenic supplements (to prevent imbalance of the other humors). I’ll prescribe you a patent medicine my brother makes.

Otherwise you might just ‘vent your spleen’, but I’ll still charge my fee for this advice.

Spleen

The connection between spleen (the organ) and melancholy (the temperament) comes from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks. One of the humours (body fluid) was the black bile, secreted by the spleen organ and associated with melancholy. In contrast, the Talmud (tractate Berachoth 61b) refers to the spleen as the organ of laughter while possibly suggesting a link with the humoral view of the organ. In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England, women in bad humor were said to be afflicted by the spleen, or the vapours of the spleen. In modern English, “to vent one’s spleen” means to vent one’s anger, e.g. by shouting, and can be applied to both males and females. Similarly, the English term “splenetic” is used to describe a person in a foul mood.

A treatise of the spleen and vapours, or, Hypocondriacal and hysterical...

[dstarfire]

@RealityChuck

Victorian woman were taught to conform to a stereotype where they were weak and delicate flowers. No doubt they would do something like that when confronted by something unpleasant. Whether they were actually fainting, or just claiming to feel faint to show how delicate they were is not easy to tell. But if you’re taught that you should feel faint at the sight of blood, you’re very likely to claim to feel faint when you see blood.

Oh, no, you didn’t!!! neck roll

[Ludovic]

No, the vapors are definitely real. I hear them on 80s channels all the time.

[SpoilerVirgin]

Wendy Williams apparently had an attack of the vapors yesterday while wearing a restrictive Halloween costume.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@pulykamell

What’s the derivation of the term “the vapors” in regards to fainting spells? I’m probably missing something very obvious, but I never quite understood the connection.

Etymonoline.com says:

vapor (n.)
late 14c., from Anglo-French vapour, Old French vapor “moisture, vapor” (13c., Modern French vapeur) and directly from Latin vaporem (nominative vapor) “a warm exhalation, steam, heat,” which is of unknown origin. Vapors “fit of fainting, hysteria, etc.” is 1660s, from medieval notion of “exhalations” from the stomach or other organs affecting the brain.

[pulykamell]

Thanks! As a etymonline addict, I have no idea why I didn’t think of looking there to begin with!

[Marvin_the_Martian]

Now that the OP has been somewhat answered, I will say that any time I hear mention of “the vapors” I immediately think of Jon Stewart’s Lindsey Graham imitations…

[dtilque]

This thread is giving me the fantods (now there’s an obscure 19th century word for you).

[Annie-Xmas]

Women were also taught never to eat or drink in public, as it was considered offensive to have to “use the facilities.”

[bibliophage]

The Straight Dope on Did Victorian era doctors use vibrators to treat hysteric female patients with orgasm therapy?

… Galen also blamed the uterus for hysteria … He believed female “sperm” (probably female ejaculate, as discussed here before, see The Straight Dope: What’s in female ejaculate?) was released during sex; its accumulation via abstinence could produce toxic vapors, resulting in hysterical symptoms, namely shortness of breath and convulsions. (This idea, incidentally, gave rise to the notion of “the vapors,” scourge of Victorian gentlewomen and southern belles, though by then doctors no longer believed actual vapors were causative.)