Victorian Vibrators

Did Victorian era doctors use vibrators to treat hysteric female patients with orgasm therapy?

In the course of some, er, serious research, I discovered that a picture is worth a thousand words.

http://www.vibratormuseum.com/

http://www.goodvibes.com/Content--Antique-Vibrator-Museum--id-367

The second link is to a (very pleasant) sex shop, so no hot linking :slight_smile:

Here’s another illustrated timeline/history of the vibrator. It’s terrifying that “The Manipulator”- the first patented one in American- ran on steam. (Incidentally, I can find descriptions of it in the government patent office website but the original patent drawings aren’t online. :wink: )

What, you’ve never heard of explosive orgasms?

Slate magazine also put together a slideshow on the history of the vibrator.

Ok, but it was my uniformed impression that hysteria was a catch-all diagnosis, encompassing depression, etc. Is this the case?