It's interesting to me how often history demonizes women and children who don't conform to the expected norms of their day. If you were to visit the French Quarter of New Orleans and go on one of the ghost tours, you would learn about three examples: Marie Laveau, Delphine Lalaurie, and the Devil Baby of Bourbon Street. Marie Laveau was born in 1801 and died in 1881. Records indicate that she was both a Roman Catholic and a voodoo high priestess. Many people living in New Orl

Dr Charcot giving a lecture on hysteria at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris. Wellcome Collection CC-BY The "rest cure" was a post American civil war treatment developed by Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell prescribed to people suffering with what he and other doctors at the time called hysteria and neurasthenia. Mitchell developed different cures for men and women. Men were given the "West Cure," which required them to go out west and wrangle cattle, camp outdoors, bond with other men