The Victorian era, which notably gave rise to women covering their ankles so not to arouse men, is often recognized for its strict crackdown on sexual behavior. Remember that in Victorian times, “female hysteria” was a bona fide medical diagnosis and its treatment was routine in Western Europe and America. An American doctor cataloged 75 pages of possible symptoms of the condition, which covered almost any ailment and was linked to nervous disorders and faulty reproductive organs. Symptoms might include faintness, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in the abdomen, muscle spasms, shortness of breath, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, and “a tendency to cause trouble”.
One previously acceptable treatment might get a physician convicted of malpractice today. Patients were encouraged to submit to weekly “pelvic massages” in which a doctor would manually stimulate the female’s genitals until the patient experienced repeated “hysterical paroxysm” (orgasms). It is interesting to note that this diagnosis was quite profitable for physicians, since the patients were at no risk of death, but needed constant care. Pelvic massages were used as a medical treatment on women into the 1900s. The condition might have actually led to the development of the modern-day dildo. In 1873, the first electromechanical vibrator was developed and used at an asylum in France for the treatment of female hysteria.
Read more at...
