Synopsis
A serious, historical study on the invention of the electric vibrator in the 19th century and its use to treat what was in that time termed "hysteria."
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1999-01-01 | | Series: | Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology | | Edition Description: | Illustrated |
| Size | | Length: | 181 pages | | Height: | 9.0 in | | Width: | 5.8 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 14.4 oz |
Publisher's Note
"When marital sex was unsatisfying and masturbation discouraged or forbidden,female sexuality asserted itself through one of the few acceptable outlets:the symptoms of the hysteroneurasthenic disorders."-from The Technology of Orgasm From the time of Hippocrates until the 1920s, massaging "hysterical" female patients to orgasm was a staple of medical practice among Western physicians. Hysteria, an ailment considered common and chronic in women, was thought to be the consequence of sexual deprivation. Doctors performed the "routine chore" of relieving hysterical patients' symptoms with manual genital massage until the women reached orgasm or, as it was known under clinical conditions, the "hysterical paroxysm." The vibrator first emerged as an electromechanical medical instrument in direct response to demand from physicians who, far from enjoying the implementation of pelvic massage, sought every opportunity to substitute the services of midwives and, later, the efficiency of mechanical devices.In The Technology of Orgasm, Rachel Maines offers readers a candid, often wryly humorous account of why such treatments were socially and ethically permissible for doctors and why women were believed to require them. The author explores hysteria in Western medicine throughout the ages and examines the characterization of female sexuality as a disease requiring treatment. Medical authorities, she writes, were able to defend and justify the clinical production of orgasm in women as necessary to maintain the dominant view of sexuality, which defined sex as penetration to male orgasm-a practice that consistently fails to produce orgasm in a majority of the female population. This male-centered definition of satisfying and healthy coitus shaped not only the development of concepts of female sexual pathology but also the instrumentation designed to cope with them. Invented in the late 1880s by a British physician, the vibrator was popular with turn-of-the-century doctors as a quick, efficient cure for hysteria that neither fatigued the therapist nor demanded skills that were difficult to acquire. Some entrepreneurs even opened vibratory "operating theatres." Maines describes in detail the wide range of vibratory apparatus available to physicians by 1900, from low-priced, foot-powered models to the Cadillac of vibrators, the Chattanooga, which cost $200 plus freight in 1904. Hysterical women presented a large and lucrative clientele for doctors, and vibrators reduced, from about one hour to 10 minutes, the time required for a physician to produce results, significantly increasing the number of patients he could treat in the course of a working day. These women were ideal patients in that they neither recovered nor died from their condition but continued to require regular medical "treatment."Maines traces the vibrator from its beginning as a sanctioned therapeutic instrument to its fall from respectability and disappearance from medical offices-after appearing in stag films in the 1920s-to its reemergence in the1960s as a sex aid. In the preface, she entertains readers with her enlightening adventures in vibrator historiography.
The surprising history of the vibrator--invented in the 1880s to treat "hysteria" in women. Maines traces the vibrator from its beginning as a sanctioned therapeutic treatment to its fall from respectability and disappearance from medical offices--after appearing in stag films in the 1920s--and its reemergence in the 1960s as a sex aid. 26 illustrations.
Industry Reviews
"Feminist scholarship exactly as it should be: a work that not only illuminates an astonishing bit of history, but does so with a neat balance of anger, wit and humor....This is a wonderful book."
L.A. Weekly - Carol L. Mithers
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