Wandering Uterus

This is more a follow-up to "The Yellow Wallpaper."

In class yesterday, we discussed "The Yellow Wallpaper," and the narrator there is accused of being hysterical. So I thought it necessary to explain to the class that years ago, hysteria (which comes from the same root as "hysterectomy," right?) was thought to occur because a woman's womb floated around in the body and somehow caused these emotional outbursts. It's the whole wandering uterus theory. And my students actually laughed. They didn't seem to believe that anyone actually believed such a thing. And of course, the implication is that only women become hysterical. I keep having this weird / funny mental image of my uterus getting somehow lodged in the wrong place, like behind my sternum, and that, of course, explains my anxiety.