In the mid-19th century, a French physician reported the bizarre behaviour of a young aristocratic woman who would suddenly, without warning, erupt in a startling fit of obscene shouts and curses. Tourette syndrome is a set of behavours, including recurrent ticcing and involuntary shouting (sometimes cursing) as well as obsessive-compulsive actions. The history of this syndrome, as described in this text, reveals how cultural and medical assumptions have determined and radically altered its characterization and treatment from the early-19th century to the late 1990s.