hysterica passio

English

Noun

hysterica passio

1. (obsolete, medicine) A panic attack as a manifestation of hysteria.
   • 1586, Samuel Harsnett, Declaration of Popish Impostures, page 25:

     Maynie had a spice of the Hysterica passio, as seems from his youth hee himselfe termes it the Moother, and saith that hee was much troubled with it in Fraunce, and that it was one of the causes that mooved him to leave his holy order whereinto he was initiated, and to returne into England.

   • 1603, Edward Jorden, A Briefe Discourse of a Disease called the Suffocation of the Mother, pages 5–6:

     This disease is called by diverse names amongst our Authors. Passio Hysterica, Suffocatio, Prascocatia, and Strangulatus uteri, Caducus matricis, etc. In English the Mother or the Suffocation of the Mother, because most commonly it takes them with choaking in the throat: and it is an affect of the Mother or wombe wherein the principal parts of the bodie by consent do suffer.

   • 1606, William Shakespeare, King Lear:

     O, how this mother swells up toward my heart! Hysterica passio, down, thou climbing sorrow, Thy element's below!

   • 1969, Balachandra Rajan, W. B. Yeats: a critical introduction, page 180:

     A Bronze Head is a more striking poem, saying its farewell to Maud in a sombre, 'mummy-dead' landscape where the hysterica passio of the mob has become the hysterica passio of inner emptiness, echoed and amplified by the emptiness of the heavens.

   • 1989, Terrence Des Pres, Praises & Dispraises: Poetry and Politics, the 20th Century, →ISBN, page 74:

     And because he was proud and quick-tempered, because he loved the fight but found himself outflanked, years of anger swelled into a rage that set him contending with attacks of hysterica passio.