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Hysteria is an illness that no longer exists, it afflicted women throughout history until the early to mid 1900's. But why were women the only ones susceptible to this sickness? And why did doctors start providing pelvic massages and prescribing vibrators to cure it?
To begin to answer all these questions you should know the origins of the word 'hysteria', it stems from the ancient Greek word 'hystera', meaning 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.
But what about Hysteria? What makes this illness so special? There were a lot of mental and physical disorders that were attributed to Hysteria, all of which eventually were found to be caused by real problems. Doctors loved Hysteria as it was pretty much a catch-all for all unknown illnesses.
Throughout history nobody really understood how the female reproductive system worked, that's why it was so easy to blame everything on it. But for some reason many doctors found that there was a trend in those who suffered from Hysteria, these tended to be nuns, virgins, widows and even a few housewives. So what do all these women have in common?
The possibly obvious answer to that question is sex, or rather, the deprivation thereof. Women were considered to be weak and rather susceptible to mental instability and many doctors believed that bringing a woman to "hysterical paroxysm" would treat Hysteria. What is "hysterical paroxysm"? In today's terms we would refer to is 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 there was one problem with this method of treatment, sometimes it could take hours to achieve the desired result. And with such a long treatment time doctors were unable to treat many patients in a day, creating a lack of income. One way doctors tried to speed things along in the mid to late 1800's was through the use of water hoses, creating a water massage.
Then 1873 rolled around, this year marked the first use of an electromechanical vibrator. These new vibrators allowed the doctors to help Hysteria sufferers not in a matter of hours but in a matter of minutes. Doctors could help many more women in a much smaller period of time.
In the very early 1900's in-home electricity was on the rise allowing the sales of vibrators to become much more wide spread. In 1918 you could find a home vibrator advertised in the Sears catalogue that they claimed was ”Very useful and satisfactory for home service.”
And so vibrators became much more common place, women could use vibrators at home, which was not masturbating, since it was all in the name of keeping them healthy and sane.
Unfortunately women can't use that excuse anymore as Hysteria is not a recognized illness, but fortunately they don't have to.
Eric Schmidt is a writer for The Sex Toy Life.com, an online retailer of quality sex toys. He has written many articles on sexuality, health and nutrition.
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