VICTORIAN 'HYSTERICAL' WOMEN - or - 'TRUST ME, I'M A DOCTOR'

Factual Questions
1

I understand that in Victorian England and the U.S. it was not uncommon for ladies of certain classes to visit their doctor for the alleviation of some of the symptoms attendant to their time of the month.

From what I know of the practice, this often included the use of industrial grade vibrators. Early versions may have been run by water wheels and windmills, but that’s just conjecture on my part. Rumors that some M.D.s kept washing machines on the spin cycle for this purpose have not been substantially documented.

My questions are:

  1. Was it pleasurable for the women?
  2. If so, were they so misinformed or uninformed that they did not recognize it as pleasure?
  3. Was the ‘treatment’ halted before orgasm?
  4. If orgasm was reached, was it considered a therapeutic result unrelated to sex?
  5. Did the women not know that an at-home alternative was readily at hand - or was body-shame so much a dominant element that such a remedy was not even an option?
  6. How wide spread was this practice?
  7. Were the doctors pervs?

It seems to me, from the elevated perspective of subsequent decades, that the process must have, in a large number of instances, produced considerable moistness on an ongoing basis.

Were the women who took the cure, and the society in which they moved, deluding themselves as to the nature of the therapy, or was a blind eye turned?

2

If you weren’t aware of it, **Cecil **did a columnon this that addresses at least some of the questions.

3

Thanks for the link, Crazyhorse, I hadn’t seen that column. But a couple of my questions weren’t addressed; and maybe they can’t be factually answered:

Did the women find it pleasurable?

If so, was this construed as a therapeutic response devoid of sexual context?

Did the women, and society at large (in as much as it was aware of the practice), attach any sexual signifgance to it, or was it basically ignored or accepted as a valid medical practice, like leeching or bloodletting from earlier years?

Were women of the time so ignorant of their sexuality, or so smothered by the mores of the times, that masturbation was not practiced and/or equated with the ministrations of the medicos?

4

There’s a very interesting book on the subject called The Technology of Orgasm. Book review here.

briefly - yes the point was to have an orgasm
No, this was not medically recognized this as a sexual act
Medically, it was called “Hysterical Paroxysm” by the way.

Early models were foot pedalled. Prior to that, the procedure was manual.