# For hysterical women, I prescribe marriage **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 28, 2010, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-hysterical-women-i-prescribe-marriage/565645 "2010-12-28T20:34:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-hysterical-women-i-prescribe-marriage/565645/1 "2010-12-28T20:34:13Z")
The above advice is first recorded as having come from Hippocrates, or at any rate one of the ancient medical sages. If you thought that this sort of thing was out of fashion in the age of psychotherapy and Paxil, think again - [it’s being endorsed in the Science section](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/health/28cases.html) of today’s New York Times (“Watching A Faith Healer At Work”). The author of this travesty is Amir Afkhami M.D. _“I came to Iraq deeply skeptical of its traditions of religious folk treatment.”_ This is a dead giveaway\*. Anytime you hear a physician (or other presumably educated person) introduce their endorsement of woo with a declaration of what a hardened skeptic they were, it is bullshit. Actually they’re predisposed to credulousness and hoping to give their remarks credibility by assuring you what hard-headed realists they are. _“To my surprise, I found a concerned faith healer who was sometimes more successful in treating the mentally ill than the few medically trained psychiatrists and general practitioners in the country.”_ You’ll be surprised too, when you find out that Afkhami’s “evidence” for this claim is a single anecdote about the treatment provided to an Iraqi woman who’s brought to the faith healer because she’s displaying profound anxiety over her upcoming (arranged?) marriage to a relative. The faith healer (a mullah who moonlights) chants a Koranic verse into the woman’s right ear (the left presumably is unclean), tells her she is possessed by a jinn (evil spirit) and that she should bathe daily, anoint herself with rosewater and definitely go ahead and get married because it’s the “responsible” thing to do. An evil reductionist Western-style psychiatrist might have deduced that this woman is deeply unhappy about a marriage she wants no part of, and counseled her about her options. But Dr. Afkhami is enthusiastic about the faith healer/mullah’s solution (as I’ll bet the parents are). Will marriage cure this woman’s ills? Will she wind up as an Iraqi Andrea Yates? Who knows? Who was the jackass who decided that this article belonged in the _Science_ section of the Times? Would they have printed this tripe if the author had been an evangelical Christian physician touting the skills of a Pentecostalist faith healer who convinces a troubled young woman to marry Cousin Jesse from over in the next holler? So I am pitting 1) woo-worshippers who pretend to be skeptics, 2) people who use religion to abuse women, and 3) the New York Times Science section editor, who’s an idiot. \*another example of the faux skeptic is described in [this article](http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/12/cnns_dr_sanjay_gupta_falling_for_faith_h.php#more) about CNN’s feature on “John of God”, another self-styled faith healer. In this case it’s a pseudo-skeptical psychiatrist, one Dr. Rediger (Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who doesn’t fare much better, takes his lumps too). ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-hysterical-women-i-prescribe-marriage/565645/2 "2010-12-28T20:40:29Z")
About all I can muster at this point is a big ol’ WTF? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-hysterical-women-i-prescribe-marriage/565645/3 "2010-12-28T20:55:54Z")
I came to this thread deeply credulous and thinking that The Woo was not only possible but probable, but (to my deep and abiding surprise) can now tell you all that I’ve become deeply skeptical and no longer believe that the answers can be found in The Woo or any other mystical bullshit explanation. I’m forced to admit that prescribing marriage to ‘cure’ a woman’s hysteria (over a marriage that she obviously has reservations about) probably isn’t going to be particularly effective…possibly on par with letting out a quart of her blood or giving her a magical metal bracelet… > [@](#): > > So I am pitting 1) woo-worshippers who pretend to be skeptics, 2) people who use religion to abuse women, and 3) the New York Times Science section editor, who’s an idiot. I think you are being too kind, on the one hand…and are really being unfair to idiots on the other. -XT ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-hysterical-women-i-prescribe-marriage/565645/4 "2010-12-28T21:12:40Z")
> [@](#): > > Anytime you hear a physician (or other presumably educated person) introduce their endorsement of woo with a declaration of what a hardened skeptic they were, it is bullshit. QFT. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-hysterical-women-i-prescribe-marriage/565645/5 "2010-12-28T21:26:48Z")
Safe to assume that the reverse transition is kosher, that if a thoroughly woo spiritualist sees the empty and converts to absolute materialism, his experience is valid? ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-hysterical-women-i-prescribe-marriage/565645/6 "2010-12-28T21:31:35Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Safe to assume that the reverse transition is kosher, that if a thoroughly woo spiritualist sees the empty and converts to absolute materialism, his experience is valid? Generally, although I would use “physicalism” instead of “materialism.” ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-hysterical-women-i-prescribe-marriage/565645/7 "2010-12-28T21:44:51Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Safe to assume that the reverse transition is kosher, that if a thoroughly woo spiritualist sees the empty and converts to absolute materialism, his experience is valid? The opposite of “wooist” is not “materialist”. Acceptable antonyms would be “evidence-based”, “critical thinker”, or “not a credulous dumbass”. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-hysterical-women-i-prescribe-marriage/565645/8 "2010-12-28T21:52:21Z")
Not sure about evidence-based. If evidence showed that accupressure reduced the incidence of cancer it’d still be woo. ---
**Author:** ![Claverhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Claverhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claverhouse)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-hysterical-women-i-prescribe-marriage/565645/9 "2010-12-28T21:52:31Z")
That’s fine for the hysterical woman, but not so good for the chap who marries her. ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-hysterical-women-i-prescribe-marriage/565645/10 "2010-12-28T22:00:00Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Not sure about evidence-based. If evidence showed that accupressure reduced the incidence of cancer it’d still be woo. Why? If the evidence consisted of a scientific double-blind reproducible study, then it changes from Woo to being based on evidence. “Woo” does not mean anything where we don’t understand how it works (at least as far as I understand this rather imprecise term). It refers to beliefs that are in contradiction to observable reality. Roddy ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-hysterical-women-i-prescribe-marriage/565645/11 "2010-12-28T22:04:28Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > If evidence showed that accupressure reduced the incidence of cancer it’d still be woo. Nope. **Roddy** ’s right on the money–if we can actually \*prove \*that something works, even if we don’t yet know how, then it’s not woo. Obviously, this only applies to \*real \*evidence, not anecdotes or flawed studies. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-hysterical-women-i-prescribe-marriage/565645/12 "2010-12-28T22:11:03Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Not sure about evidence-based. If evidence showed that accupressure reduced the incidence of cancer it’d still be woo. You know what they call alternative medicine that’s been scientifically proven to work? Medicine. And this is the perfect time to link to [Storm, by Tim Minchin](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB_htqDCP-s&feature=player_embedded). ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-hysterical-women-i-prescribe-marriage/565645/13 "2010-12-28T22:18:42Z")
Woman is crazy. Man “woos” woman to gain her hand in marriage. Woman no longer crazy. Seems like good evidence of the power of “woo” to me. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-hysterical-women-i-prescribe-marriage/565645/14 "2010-12-28T22:50:42Z")
By the way, I found the exact quote referenced in the thread title. It does come from Hippocrates, and it goes like this: “For hysterical maidens, I prescribe marriage, for they are cured by pregnancy.” This and other pithy aphorisms are contained in [a 1928 medical journal article](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2393983/pdf/bullnyacadmed00910-0005.pdf) which is just jammed chock-full of useful stuff. Some of the sayings have relevance to the Dope, such as: _“The head of a guinea fowl carries no burden.”_ (this explains why some Dopers appear to be happy) _“Put the meat away and you’ll get rid of the flies.”_ (In other words, Do Not Feed The Troll). 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-hysterical-women-i-prescribe-marriage/565645/15 "2010-12-28T22:54:47Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > It does come from Hippocrates, and it goes like this: “For hysterical maidens, I prescribe marriage, for they are cured by pregnancy.” Well, _duh_. Hysteria is caused by the womb wandering all over the fucking place. Pregnancy makes it settle down in one spot. ---
**Author:** ![Dallas\_Jones](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dallas_jones/32/3277_2.png) [@Dallas\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dallas_Jones)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2010, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-hysterical-women-i-prescribe-marriage/565645/16 "2010-12-29T04:06:28Z")
Well, the very word ‘hysteria’ finds it’s roots in the… ah… womanly parts. I’m just saying… > **[Hysteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteria)** > > Hysteria is a term used to mean ungovernable emotional excess and can refer to a temporary state of mind or emotion. In the nineteenth century, female hysteria was considered a diagnosable physical illness in women. It is assumed that the basis for diagnosis operated under the belief that women are predisposed to mental and behavioral conditions; an interpretation of sex-related differences in stress responses. In the twentieth century, it shifted to being considered a mental illness. In Curren... > [@](#): > > In the Western world, until the seventeenth century, hysteria referred to a medical condition thought to be particular to women and caused by disturbances of the uterus (from the Greek ὑστέρα “hystera” = uterus). But I believe that Hippocrates was wrong. I think it was Plato who first said “Don’t put your dick in the crazy”. I’m pretty sure. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2010, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-hysterical-women-i-prescribe-marriage/565645/17 "2010-12-29T04:33:38Z")
Yeah, but Plato was gay, wasn’t he? So he wouldn’t be putting his dick in ANY of that, crazy or not. (Well, unless he was a top) ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2010, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-hysterical-women-i-prescribe-marriage/565645/18 "2010-12-29T04:51:24Z")
You mean, when she said she wanted a Platonic relationship, that’s what she was talking about? And now somebody tells me? Damn! ---
**Author:** ![Dallas\_Jones](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dallas_jones/32/3277_2.png) [@Dallas\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dallas_Jones)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2010, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-hysterical-women-i-prescribe-marriage/565645/19 "2010-12-29T06:20:27Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Yeah, but Plato was gay, wasn’t he? So he wouldn’t be putting his dick in ANY of that, crazy or not. > > (Well, unless he was a top) It might have been Aristotle instead of Plato, or maybe it was Sting. I’m sure it wasn’t Jack Handy, but I’ll have to check my notes to be certain. ---
**Author:** ![armedmonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@armedmonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armedmonkey)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2010, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-hysterical-women-i-prescribe-marriage/565645/20 "2010-12-29T06:29:44Z")
Don’t regret it, **elucidator**. She wanted to be the top. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-hysterical-women-i-prescribe-marriage/565645.md?page=2)