Why Victorian Doctors Gave Women Orgasms as Medical Treatment

Why Victorian Doctors Gave Women Orgasms as Medical Treatment

In 1897, a respectable London lady named Mrs. Witmore visited her doctor with a complaint of piles. Anxiety, insomnia, irritability, and what he gently called nervous breakdowns .  According to the best medical practice of the time, the doctor diagnosed her with hysteria and prescribed a treatment that would immediately revoke her license today.

   He laid her down on the examination table and manually stimulated her genitals until she experienced what he clinically recorded as a hysterical paroxysm .  This wasn’t some dark alley charlatan.  This was a completely normal medical practice, performed by renowned doctors in the coolest clinics in Europe and America.

   For over 2,000 years, women were treated for hysteria, a blanket diagnosis supposedly caused by the wandering uterus.  By the Victorian era, this treatment had evolved into something completely amazing. Doctors were literally giving women orgasms as medical therapy, and they had no idea what they were doing.

  This is the shocking true story of how Victorian sexual repression was so complete that doctors invented the vibrator just so their hands wouldn’t hurt from treating hundreds of hysterical women, while being completely blind to what they were actually doing.  But before we delve deeper, how did Victorian doctors turn this ancient Greek nonsense into a thriving medical industry? Hit the subscribe button and ring the bell because in my next video I’ll tell you how Victorian women poisoned themselves with arsenic wafers, lead-based face paint, and mercury-laden

cosmetics just to achieve that lung-scarred , streaked look, trust me, you ‘ll never complain about modern makeup again. So, let’s get back to how doctors got from wandering to the accidental invention of the vibrator. The concept of hysteria dates back to ancient Egypt, but it was Hippocrates, the Greek physician, who gave it its name.

Hysteria means uterus in Greek, and doctors believed that women’s uteruses literally wandered through their bodies, causing all sorts of symptoms.  Plato described the womb as an animal within an animal, desperate to have children.  If a woman remained childless for too long, the uterus began to wander around her body, pressing on organs and causing everything from anxiety to fainting.

The prescribed remedy is marriage and pregnancy to satisfy the restless organ.  By the Renaissance, doctors had abandoned the wandering bee theory, but the diagnosis was retained. The symptoms of hysteria extended to practically anything that bothered a woman. Anxiety, insomnia, muscle cramps, shortness of breath, loss of appetite, irritability, depression, sexually aggressive behavior, sexually repressed behavior, and a tendency to stir up trouble.

  Essentially, if a woman wasn’t perfectly submissive and satisfied, she was probably hysterical .  The English physician Thomas Siden estimated that hysteria was the most common disease in the 18th century, affecting one in four women.  Victorian medical theory held that women were inherently more delicate and nervous than men.

   Their entire physiology was supposedly dominated by their reproductive system, which  predisposed them to mental and physical weakness. Dr. William, a famous Victorian physician, wrote in 1857 that the majority of women, fortunately for them, did not suffer much from sexual feelings at all. This widespread belief that fair-skinned women have no sexual desire at all has created a huge blind spot in medical practice.

So when women came to the doctor with sexual frustration, even though neither the doctor nor the patient would have called it that, the doctors only saw an illness.  The treatment that emerged was pelvic massage to induce the hysterical paroxysm, which we now know as orgasm.  But the Viktori János doctors described this in purely clinical terms.

Nathaniel Heimore wrote in 13660 that during the treatment the affected woman would experience intense muscle contractions and relaxations .  The face flushes and the symptoms subside.  This is how the treatment actually went.  The woman went to the doctor’s office every week.  He lay topless on the examination table, but covered with a sheet for modesty.

  The doctor  applied scented oils, usually lavender or rose, and massaged the vulva in circular motions . Medical textbooks recommended continuing until the patient reached paroxysm, which was described as sudden muscle contractions, flushed skin, and abundant vaginal lubrication, followed by deep relaxation. Dr. Dr.

 Russell Torp wrote in 193 that reaching a hysterical paroxysm could take up to an hour , and complained that it was the most tedious and exhausting medical procedure. The doctors really just saw him as a robot.   There was nothing sexual in their minds.  They simply created a medical crisis to alleviate the symptoms. To them, it was as clinical as setting a broken bone.

One doctor wrote that treating hysterical patients is hard work for a doctor.  One requires a knife sharpener. The treatment was amazingly common.  By the late 1800s, doctors estimated that up to 71% of American women suffered from hysteria. In large cities, some doctors  specialized exclusively in treating hysteria and treated dozens of women a day .  Dr.

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 Taylor’s New York practice advertised complete relief from nervous exhaustion and women’s troubles, and he employed several doctors to keep up with demand. Contemporary calendars reveal that women made appointments on a weekly or biweekly basis, often for years.  Not all treatments were performed in the office.  The wealthy had doctors come to their homes for private treatment, but the most popular solution was hydrotherapy at specialized clinics.

   During the water treatment, high-pressure water jets were directed at the genitals while the patients sat on special chairs.  European spas, such as Bath in England or Baden Baden in Germany, became famous for their treatments for hysteria. The women spent weeks at the water. in the waters and received treatment several times a day .

Rachel Maines documented how these water cures worked in her groundbreaking book The Technology of Orgasm. Patients sat on chairs with cut-out seats while therapists directed powerful jets of water at their genitals.  The French called it Laduc Pelvien, a pool shower. A 1975 Baden-Baden advertisement promised the complete restoration of female vitality through the scientific application of thermal waters.

Women reported feeling invigorated and completely healthy after the treatment. By the 1980s, Dr. Joseph Mortimer Granville had a problem.  His hands were swollen  from treating too many hysterical patients. Manual pelvic massage was exhausting work , especially when some women took an hour to paroxysm.

  His solution revolutionized the treatment of hysteria. The first electric vibrator, the Granville Percussion, used an electric motor to create rapid vibrations, reducing treatment time to an hour.  He insisted that the device was only good for male muscle diseases, but other doctors quickly took it up hysterically. Within a decade, dozens of vibrator models flooded the medical market.

  The Voice Company’s 1906 catalog offered over 20 models. Advertisements in medical journals praised its effectiveness .  The Chatanuga vibrator relieves the symptoms of hysteria in 10 minutes. By 1900, vibrators were the fifth most common electrical appliance in American homes,  appearing in catalogs alongside toasters and sewing machines.

  The 1988 Sears catalog advertised a home vibrator as a very useful and satisfying home service.  The ads were surprisingly explicit while remaining medical.  A 1910 advertisement showed a woman using a vibrator on her face.  And the text is the vibration of life.  The secret of centuries has been discovered in vibration.

  Great scientists say that we owe our health and vitality to this miraculous power .  The white cross electric vibrator brings the essence of life to your door. But here comes the really shocking part. No one understood what we meant sexually. Doctors wrote detailed clinical articles  on the induction of hysterical paroxysms without ever linking them to sexual climax.

Why?  Because Victorian medical education completely omitted female sexuality. Medical textbooks taught that women’s reproductive organs existed solely for reproduction.  The clitoris was barely mentioned, if at all.  Many anatomy books simply labeled it as a small vestigial organ with no function. The willful ignorance was astonishing.

Dr. John Harv Kellog, yes, the cornflakes, treated hysteria with vibrators in a sanatorium while campaigning against masturbation as a dangerous evil.   He never connected the two. Doctors gave women orgasms all day long as a medical treatment.  Then they went home to their wives, who they believed had no sexual desire at all .

  The cognitive dissonance required for this is amazing. Some women clearly understood what was happening, even if they couldn’t say it.  Contemporary diary entries point to the truth. An anonymous woman wrote in 182: “My weekly appointments with Dr. Harrison have completely put me in my right mind. I look forward to Thursday afternoons with great excitement.

” Another commented, “The treatment, though strange, gives relief like no tonic or medicine.” Women recommended their doctors to their friends, creating networks of patients who all received the same treatment.  The medical community’s blindness to female sexuality had serious consequences beyond the treatment of hysteria.

  Doctors performed clitoridectomy to cure masturbation, burning the clitoris with acid to prevent ejaculation. Dr. Isaac Baker Brown, president of the London Medical Society, also removed the clitoris of 10-year-old girls  due to hysteria.  He was eventually expelled from the company, but only because he operated without consent.

  Not because the procedure itself was questionable.  Meanwhile, the hysteria industry flourished. By 195, American doctors were earning about $18 million a year  from hysteria treatments, which is more than $450 million in today’s money. Manufacturers produced increasingly complex devices .  The 1908 Vibratil came with several accessories for various women’s complaints.

  On the pulses, a hand-cranked modelino from 90 promised relief without electricity . Some devices are built into furniture, in special treatment chairs with a vibrating mechanism. The beginning of the end came from Freud.  Although his theories were deeply flawed, Freud at least acknowledged that women have sexual desires.

  recognized that the symptoms of hysteria were often due to psychological, not physical, causes. By the 1920s, the American Psychiatric Association had begun to abandon the diagnosis of hysteria, but the real nail in the coffin came from an unexpected source: stag films. In the 1920s, in early pornographic films, women used vibrators for clearly sexual purposes .

  Suddenly, the medical device that was advertised in respectable magazines was associated with sexuality. Vibrators disappeared from doctors’ offices almost overnight. The Siars catalog removed them by 1925, and what had previously been a common medical treatment became taboo.  The doctors quietly stopped the pelvic exam and discreetly threw away the dust-covered vibrators .

The diagnosis of hysteria officially disappeared from medical texts in 192, but its legacy remains.  Women’s legitimate medical complaints  were still labeled as hysterical or sentimental. The term has become a catch-all term for the rejection of women’s experiences.   It was only in the 1960s, through the research of Masters and Johnson, that female sexuality began to be properly studied .

They discovered what those Viktor Jánus women knew, but could not say, that the hysterical paroxysm that doctors had been inducing for centuries was simply an orgasm.  Looking back, the whole episode is almost unbelievable.  How did trained medical professionals fail to recognize orgasm?  How could they perform explicitly sexual acts while believing they were purely medical? The answer lies in the power of cultural blindness .

  Victorian society’s complete denial of female sexuality created a reality where doctors could give women orgasms all day long without them realizing what they were doing.  Dr. Rachel Maines, who has spent years researching this history, noted the irony.  Victorian doctors unwittingly provided the only sexual satisfaction many women received, while believing it was treating a disease caused by a lack of sexual satisfaction.

  The women who lined up for treatment knew something the doctors didn’t. That the hysterical paroxysm was the only bright spot in their otherwise sexually joyless lives. The numbers are amazing.   At the peak of hysteria treatment between 1850 and 1920, millions of people in major cities were given regular swimming baths.

  Some women went weekly for decades.  If we conservatively estimate that adult women have received treatment for 10, and an average of 20 times, more than 10 million doctors have given them orgasms.  All this by doctors who had no idea what they were doing.  This history is important because it shows how cultural assumptions can distort medical practice.

These were not marginal charlatans .  They were the most respected doctors of the time.  They studied at the best medical schools , followed accepted protocols .  Yet they were so blinded by their culture’s denial of female sexuality that they failed to recognize the obvious truth that was literally at their fingertips .

  So the next time someone calls a woman’s health complaint hysterical or sentimental, remember this.  For centuries, the medical community was so ignorant about the female body that it accidentally invented the vibrator while trying to treat a made-up disease. They were so convinced that women had no sexual desire that they didn’t recognize orgasm when they caused it themselves.

  The treatment of hysteria is one of the strangest chapters in medical history , when doctors prescribed exactly what women needed , while having no idea what they were doing.  What is the most shocking thing about this story for you? Medical ignorance, cultural blindness, or the fact that vibrators were once so commonplace in doctors’ offices?  like stethoscopes.

Write it in the comments, and if you thought this was weird, wait for my next video. Why did Victorian women use arsenic for beauty?   With Hiddel, what they did for the pale color will be terrifying.  Don’t forget to like and subscribe, and be grateful for modern medicine that truly understands human anatomy.

  You deserve this knowledge.  M.