Gendered Pathology: Hysteria, Body, and Forensic Medicine in 1930s China

This paper examines forensic examinations of hysteria in 1930s China, focusing on how forensic doctors determined criminal and civil accountability through physiological evidence, reflecting the dominance of scientific medicine over both female and male bodies. Even though the uterine pathology of hysteria in humoral medicine resonates with the Chinese concept of “female venereal agitation Furen zangzao”, the formal translation of hysteria in terms of psychiatry is a gender-neutral name “zangzao” without the female adjective. This paper argues that using the gender-neutral translations of hysteria helped Chinese physicians borrow the authority from evidence-based rationality to assert their credibility of science: since hysteria could happen to a man as well, it is wrong for Western medicine to call it a womb disease while the disease from Chinese medicine “zangzao” is more convincing. The term zangzao became a general category for mental abnormality. However, there is a gender-varied hysteria etiology in the examination. Forensic physicians explained female hysteria through the temperament (Qizhi) linked to uterine pathologies—such as the tilted uterus, menstruation, and vaginal discharge—while attributing male hysteria to inherited constitutional factors (Tizhi) – such as psychiatric family history and prenatal history. This paper argues that the examination of hysteria in 1930s China reflects a gendered narrative of pathologizing the female and male body differently, which problematizes femininity, moralizes the instability of female emotions, and perpetuates misogynistic assumptions and eugenics anxiety.