The words hysteria and history are differentiated in Spanish by only one letter (histeria/historia), although they refer to completely different things. In the present text, at least, hysteria refers to a concept addressed by Mexican doctors toward the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth, in reference to the disease, while history refers to an account of the past such as is produced today in Mexico in the institutional sphere of the university. Thus, these are two distinct objects from two different time periods: one from the past, the medical hysteria of the late nineteenth century, and the other from the present, the methods that make it possible to approach the theme of Mexican hysteria of the fin de siècle.
