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She experienced difficulties with speech and became prone to verbal outbursts.
But then a second girl at the school began to display the same behavior.
After the second, another.
Two makes for a curiosity; three a concern.
By the time the tally metastasized past a dozen girls, it looked like a contagion.
An irregular heartbeat finding rhythm.
Some unaffected students suspected that their peers were faking the malady for attention.
In other words, the girls were deemed to be suffering from mass hysteria.
Taberski, a son of Western New York, grew up not far from Le Roy.
Not anything that wouldve made it into something like this, she says.
For a lot of the girls and the parents in Le Roy, it just didnt feel true.
Taberski also cuts off any indication thatHystericalwill drive toward a clear answer to the mystery.
This does not mean thatHystericaldoes not arrive at an outcome.
Taberski is one of the finest audio documentarians working today, yet he still seems underappreciated.
I never quite shared that assessment.
Conversion disorder is a tricky and fundamentally gendered diagnosis.
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