ysteria is a 4,000-year-old diagnosis that has been applied to no mean parade of witches, saints and, of course, Anna O.   But over the last 50 years, the word has been spoken less and less. The disappearance of hysteria has been heralded at least since the 1960's. What had been a Victorian catch-all splintered into many different diagnoses. Hysteria seemed to be a vanished 19th-century extravagance useful for literary analysis but surely out of place in the serious reaches of contemporary science.

LAS VEGAS (US) - PAULA ALLEN radiates the kind of sweetness one might associate with an unusually content librarian in some wholesome precinct of the heartland. But Ms. Allen, blond, leggy and 32, is a showgirl in Sin City. She is a principal dancer in Donn Arden's ''Jubilee!'' at Bally's, arguably the last true showgirl show in Las Vegas, which celebrated its 25th anniversary two weeks ago. This position, officially speaking, makes Ms. Allen a symbol of the city, a figure of living history. Feathered, rouged, high-heeled, headdressed, rhinestone-brassiered history.

ON Nov. 22 Armando Braswell, a young dancer who graduated from the Juilliard School late last month, put down a $547.63 wager on his future. That bought him a plane ticket from Kennedy Airport to Milan and back again, via Amsterdam. His classmate Bryna Pascoe made a similar bid, but her plane ticket cost $30 less. The goal of both journeys was the same: to make the leap from being a dancer with grand ambitions to being a dancer with a job.

IT is a truth acknowledged in the Niederhoffer family that a man in possession of six daughters must be in want of a son. The man in question is Victor Niederhoffer, son of a Coney Island cop, who in the mid-1990's was recognized as one of the most successful (and most idiosyncratic) money managers in the nation.   On a recent Sunday his ex-wife, Gail, his current wife, Susan, who is divorcing him, and five of his six daughters -- Galt, Katie, Rand, Artemis and Kira -- gathered for brunch in the airy Chelsea apartment Galt shares with her fiance, James Strouse, and their 19-month-old daughter, Magnolia.