What is it about?
Ovarian resection as a treatment for hysteria and 'hystero-epilepsy', called “Battey’s operation” was performed in the late nineteenth century. Battey himself reported 14 years after his first report that the resected ovaries appeared “cystic degeneration”. We retrospectively hypothesized that anti-NMDAR encephalitis patients were among the patients who underwent ovariotomies in the nineteenth century.
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Why is it important?
We analyzed 36 neuropsychiatric and pathologically well documented patients in the 19th century, and found 3 patients who nearly met the clinical criteria of anti-NMDAR encephalitis. However, there were no patients with diagnosed resected ovaries as teratomas by surgeons themselves.
Perspectives
The definitions of ‘hystero-epilepsy’ in the nineteenth century were vague. Further investigations are required to elucidate the full picture of hystero-epilepsy, a neglected entity.
Dr. Tomoko Komagamine
Dokkyo Medical University
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This page is a summary of: Battey’s operation as a treatment for hysteria: a review of a series of cases in the nineteenth century, History of Psychiatry, September 2019, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0957154x19877145.
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