The term referring to illnesses known as Vapours (or vapors) is an archaic form for certain mental or physical states, such as hysteria

Hysteria

Hysteria, in its colloquial use, describes unmanageable emotional excesses. People who are "hysterical" often lose self-control due to an overwhelming fear that may be caused by multiple events in one's past that involved some sort of severe conflict; the fear can be centered on a body part, or,...

, mania

Mania

Mania, the presence of which is a criterion for certain psychiatric diagnoses, is a state of abnormally elevated or irritable mood, arousal, and/ or energy levels. In a sense, it is the opposite of depression...

, clinical depression

Clinical depression

Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...

, bipolar disorder

Bipolar disorder

Bipolar disorder or bipolar affective disorder, historically known as manic–depressive disorder, is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a category of mood disorders defined by the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated energy levels, cognition, and mood with or without one or...

, fainting, withdrawal syndrome

Withdrawal syndrome

A withdrawal syndrome, also called a discontinuation syndrome, occurs when a person suddenly stops taking or reduces the dosage of some types of medications...

, mood swings

Mood Swings

Mood Swings is an album by Koby Israelite released in 2005 on Tzadik.- Track listing :# "Dror Ikra" - 3:03# "Return of the Idiots" - 2:19# "It Is Not a War Here" - 7:05# "Ethnometalogy" - 5:08# "Europa?" - 2:49# "Hiriya On My Mind" - 4:53...

 or PMS

Premenstrual stress syndrome

Premenstrual syndrome is a collection of physical and emotional symptoms related to a woman's menstrual cycle...

, ascribed primarily to women and thought to be caused by internal emanations. This is related to the similar term female hysteria

Female hysteria

Female hysteria was a once-common medical diagnosis, made exclusively in women, which is today no longer recognized by modern medical authorities as a medical disorder. Its diagnosis and treatment were routine for many hundreds of years in Western Europe. Hysteria was widely discussed in the...

. Vapors were considered to be the female equivalent to melancholy found in men.

See also

"The Anatomy of Melancholy, what it is, with all the kinds, causes, symptoms, prognostics, and several cures of it." In three partitions. With their several sections, members, and subsections, philosophically, medically, historically opened and cut up. By Democritus Junior (Robert Burton

Robert Burton (scholar)

Robert Burton was an English scholar at Oxford University, best known for the classic The Anatomy of Melancholy. He was also the incumbent of St Thomas the Martyr, Oxford, and of Segrave in Leicestershire.-Life:...

). With a satirical preface, conducing to the following discourse. London; William Tegg and Co., Queen Street, Cheapside. 1854.