For me what is more important is not the historic development of the word, but how people currently feel about it. If women feel uncomfortable with or devalued by the word ‘hysterectomy’ and its potential association with the word ‘hysteria’ then that is good grounds in itself for changing the term for this procedure.
The procedure itself is no small thing and it has so many potential ramifications both physiologically and in terms of a sense of who you are, such that anything, including the naming of the procedure, that can be done to make the woman subject to it more comfortable is a good thing.
There are many historic prejudices and inequalities that have been fossilised in contemporary language. In the 1970s and 1980s I remember sexism encoded in language was an important issue within feminism and words such as ‘female’ and ‘woman’ among many others were challenged. Perhaps it is easy for me as a man to say this, but is changing words just for the sake of it particularly useful, rather we should be asking what words now make women feel uncomfortable or devalued and change them, otherwise we could endlessly be interrogating the historic negative associations of language: the word Gael used by the Scottish Gaelic to describe themselves means foreigner; and if I remember correctly the origin of the words Wales and Welsh are linked to an old word for slave; also the modern English word slave comes from Slav or Slavic the Eastern European ethnic grouping which could be seen as insulting to them; etc.
Also changing words does not guarantee the prejudices behind them go away. You see this with words designating learning disability, where terms such as Down’s Syndrome or Special Needs were introduced to escape the pejorative implications of previous terminology become in turn used as insults themselves. Or as
@Sean points out, the negative connotations inherent in the word hysteria have for some been disguised in the modern terms conversion disorder and even the superficially neutral term FND.