wayback near the beginning (of the millennium also), I troubled upon the word tarassis in Mrs Byrne's Dictionary, which she glossed as male hysteria.

at the time, NicholasW opined, "There is no such word as tarassis. Mrs Byrne has got herself a mumpsimus, à mon avis."

but, he did point out the Gk tarasso, which per Liddell/Scott means to trouble the mind, confound, agitate, disturb, disquiet. this gets us in the ballpark at least, IMO.

the question remains, where did the word first manifest itself?
it keeps showing up in places such as Paul Dickson's Words and David Grambs' Endangered English Dict. - and in bunches of French texts.

-joe (seven years of hysteria later) friday

Someone has written a book with that word in the title! I sent you the link privately, as it is a sales page.
If anyone else is interested, it came up as the fifth listing when I Googled the word.

EDIT: I also found the word in a French-language book, written in 1887 if I read the Google listing right:
tarassis
It quotes Tarassis, ou troubles de l'âme et du corps chez l'homme which translates roughly to Tarassis, or troubles of the soul and body of a man.

I have nothing to add, but must say I do love to learn from all of you... I appreciate your knowledge and dedication to the written word

I think that's a journal article, and I don't think I can reference it (and I did mention that the word appears in lots of French texts).

I have found a reference to it via JSTOR, in an article from the American Journal of Philology, which lends support to NW's mumpsimus comment and gives a clue to the provenance of the word:

..if the word coined by Sanoaville de Lachèse for hysteria in the male was really "tarassis" and not "taraxis," the form should not have been cited with approval.

The article is a review by James Poultney of the book Greek and Latin in Scientific Terminology, by Oscar Nybakken.

edit - and here is the actual citation from Nybakken (thanks to Google[Books]):

(under the Heading: Shortening, Malformations, Misnomers)
18. "Hysteria" (hustera?, womb) is a form of neurosis which, strictly speaking, ought to apply to women only. But males suffer from the malady, too, and the same term is used to designate it. In 1886 Sanoaville de Lachèse proposed that the word "tarassis" (?, to agitate, disturb, trouble) be used to designate hysteria in the male, but in spite of its appropriateness the term has not received general acceptance. It is not always the superior scientific term that succeeds in winning approval.

Hi Dixie