Écho de l'hystérie was born out of another book: the legendary Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière of Paul Régnard and Désiré-Magloire Bourneville, "a narrative made of pictures and words forged out of a single material: the observation of fits" — the fits of women held to be mad, in the wards of Professor Charcot. Moving the object into the field of aesthetics, the author builds a rich, rigorous and essential text that gives shelter to a set of overwhelming portraits of women.