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There was once an ailment, a wide-spread disorder until the early 1900's, called Hysteria. But what was it? Where did it come from? Why were women the only ones to suffer from it? And what is the connection between this strange illness and vibrators?
The first step in understanding Hysteria is to understand where the word came from. Hysteria is derived from an ancient Greek word, 'hystera', which means uterus.
So the uterus is the center of this disease, its origins if you will. But why the uterus? The uterus has a long and unhappy history of being thought of as evil, as being the area of the woman's body that causes sickness, mental instability and craziness.
Hysteria turned out to be a great diagnosis for doctors to give their female patients. Since hysteria was caused by the uterus and everybody knew how unstable and weak women were, every illness that wasn't understood could be called Hysteria.
During the mid to late 1800's, a time when Hysteria was at its peak, many doctors noted a trend in women who suffered from this illness. Many of those women turned out to be virgins, nuns, widows and even some housewives. But what is it that connects all these women?
No sex, and no sex led to a severe shortage of "hysterical paroxysm", what we now know as an orgasm.
But women couldn't masturbate, that was a horrible, disgusting self-indulgence. So what? What could women do? There were doctors out there who could help, by providing controlled pelvic massages doctors could induce this "hysterical paroxysm" in women.
But unfortunately for the doctors this process was often very long, even taking up to a few hours. Spending that much of a day for just one patient was definitely not profitable. But to help them, in the mid 1800's some doctors were able to use a water hose to massage the pelvic region.
But thankfully in 1873 a new tool was created and first used in an asylum in France to treat Hysteria. This tool was called a electromechanical vibrator. This wondrous tool allowed doctors to help their patients in a matter of minutes, not hours.
Around the early 1900's many people started getting electricity in their houses. This allowed women to treat themselves in the safety and privacy of their very own homes. Vibrators started to become much more common around the country. Sears printed an ad in one of their catalogues in 1918 where the touted their vibrator as being ”Very useful and satisfactory for home service.”
Thus started the great vibrator movement, allowing women a bit of vibrator fun at home, all in the name of keeping them sane.
But nowadays there is no such illness as Hysteria so women can't say their vibrators are used to treat any disease. But luckily they don't need to.
Eric Schmidt writes articles and blogs on sexuality, health and sex toys. You can find articles he has writtne on various eZine and article websites.
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