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?
The first step in understanding Hysteria is to understand where the word came from. Hysteria is derived from an ancient Greek word, 'hystera', which means 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.
Hysteria turned out to be a great diagnosis for doctors to give their female patients. Since hysteria was caused by the uterus and everybody knew how unstable and weak women were, every illness that wasn't understood could be called Hysteria.
During the mid to late 1800's, a time when Hysteria was at its peak, many doctors noted a trend in women who suffered from this illness. Many of those women turned out to be virgins, nuns, widows and even some housewives. But what is it that connects all these women?
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 unfortunately for the doctors this process was often very long, even taking up to a few hours. Spending that much of a day for just one patient was definitely not profitable. But to help them, in the mid 1800's some doctors were able to use a water hose to massage the pelvic region.
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.
Around the early 1900's many people started getting electricity in their houses. This allowed women to treat themselves in the safety and privacy of their very own homes. Vibrators started to become much more common around the country. Sears printed an ad in one of their catalogues in 1918 where the touted their vibrator as being �Very useful and satisfactory for home service.�
That started the wonderful vibrator movement, women could now enjoy themselves at home, safely, without masturbating, all to keep them healthy, sane and Hysteria-free.
These days women would have a tough time convincing anybody they had Hysteria and that's why they need to keep their vibrators around. But thankfully they don't have to.