Female Hysteria: When Victorian Doctors Used to Finger Their Patients

In the Victorian Era – specifically 1837 to 1901 – doctors treated woman by genital stimulation to induce “hysterical paroxysm” or an orgasm. This hysteria was supposed to be a build-up of fluid in the woman’s womb and doctors assumed that since men ejaculated and felt better then it stood to reason.

But what about the husbands? What did they have to say about this? Well, proper gentlemen of the time were not trained to see to their wives needs – it was not even understood that women had needs. Instead it was much easier to call for the doctor when a woman exhibited symptoms of hysteria. Yes, the doctor could treat the women in their home. The Fainting Couch or Chaise Lounge became popular for the ladies’ comfort during this “treatment”.

Female hysteria was a once-common medical diagnosis, made exclusively in women, which is today no longer recognized by modern medical authorities as a medical disorder. Its diagnosis and treatment was routine for many hundreds of years in Western Europe. Hysteria was widely discussed in the medical literature of the Victorian era. Women considered to be suffering from it exhibited a wide array of symptoms including faintness, nervousness, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in abdomen, muscle spasm, shortness of breath, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, and “a tendency to cause trouble”.

Women with hysteria under the effects of hypnosis, ca. 1870s.

Since ancient times women considered to be suffering from hysteria would sometimes undergo “pelvic massage” — manual stimulation of the anterior wall of the vagina by the doctor until the patient experienced “hysterical paroxysm”.

Victorian advertisement showing a doctor treating woman’s hysteria by “pelvic massage”.

A solution was the invention of massage devices, which shortened treatment from hours to minutes, removing the need for midwives and increasing a physician’s treatment capacity. Already at the turn of the century, hydrotherapy devices were available at Bath, and by the mid-19th century, they were popular at many high-profile bathing resorts across Europe and in America. By 1870, a clockwork-driven vibrator was available for physicians. In 1873, the first electromechanical vibrator was used at an asylum in France for the treatment of hysteria.

While physicians of the period acknowledged that the disorder stemmed from sexual dissatisfaction, they seemed unaware of or unwilling to admit the sexual purposes of the devices used to treat it. In fact, the introduction of the speculum was far more controversial than that of the vibrator.

Female patient with sleep hysteria wearing a straight jacket.

High frequency electric currents in medicine, 1910.

Water massages as a treatment for hysteria, ca. 1860.

A physician in 1859 claimed that a quarter of all women suffered from hysteria, which is reasonable considering that one physician cataloged 75 pages of possible symptoms of hysteria and called the list incomplete; almost any ailment could fit the diagnosis. Physicians thought that the stresses associated with modern life caused civilized women to be both more susceptible to nervous disorders and to develop faulty reproductive tracts. In America, such disorders in women reaffirmed that the United States was on par with Europe; one American physician expressed pleasure that the country was “catching up” to Europe in the prevalence of hysteria.

Rachael P. Maines, author of The Technology of Orgasm: “Hysteria,” the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction, has observed that such cases were quite profitable for physicians, since the patients were at no risk of death but needed constant treatment. The only problem was that physicians did not enjoy the tedious task of vaginal massage (generally referred to as ‘pelvic massage’): The technique was difficult for a physician to master and could take hours to achieve “hysterical paroxysm”. Referral to midwives, which had been common practice, meant a loss of business for the physician.

An early 1900s vibrator unit.

An early vibrator ad.

A 1918 Sears, Roebuck and Co. ad with several models of vibrators.

Advertisement for the Barker Vibrator by James Barker in Philadelphia, ca. 1906.

By the turn of the century, the spread of home electricity brought the vibrator to the consumer market. The appeal of cheaper treatment in the privacy of one’s own home understandably made the vibrator a popular early home appliance. In fact, the electric home vibrator was on the market before many other home appliance ‘essentials’: nine years before the electric vacuum cleaner and 10 years before the electric iron. A page from a Sears catalog of home electrical appliances from 1918 includes a portable vibrator with attachments, billed as “Very useful and satisfactory for home service.”

Late 19th century “medical massager”.

Smallpox Breaks Out in Sydney, 1789

Smallpox has been one of humanity’s deadliest diseases, though it is now eradicated in the wild.

Europeans, including the colonists who arrived in Sydney in 1788, had developed some resistance through earlier exposure to the disease. However the local Aboriginal people had not.

There is still debate over how smallpox broke out in the Sydney area in 1789. Its impact on Aboriginal people across Australia was devastating.

The effects of smallpox are shown in this photograph taken at North Head Quarantine Station, Sydney. (National Museum of Australia)

David Collins, Judge-Advocate of the colony, April 1789:

At that time a native was living with us; and on taking him down to the harbour to look for his former companions, those who witnessed his expression and agony can never forget either. He looked anxiously around him in the different coves we visited; not a vestige on the sand was to be found of human foot; ... not a living person was anywhere to be met with. It seemed as if, flying from the contagion, they had left the dead to bury the dead. He lifted up his hands and eyes in silent agony for some time; at last he exclaimed, ‘All dead! all dead!’ and then hung his head in mournful silence.

In April 1789, 15 months after the First Fleet arrived to establish a penal colony in NSW, a major smallpox epidemic broke out.

The outbreak did not affect the British colonists, most of whom had been exposed to the disease during their infancy. As a result, smallpox was not detected until members of the Aboriginal communities living between Sydney Cove and the Heads were found, according to Newton Fowell, ‘laying Dead on the Beaches and in the Caverns of Rocks’. They were, ‘generally found with the remains of a Small Fire on each Side of them and some Water left within their Reach’.

Without previous exposure to the smallpox virus, Aboriginal people had no resistance, and up to 70 per cent were killed by the disease.

The question of how smallpox appeared among the local Indigenous groups was settled to the satisfaction of the early settlers by blaming the French. Explorer Comte de La Perouse had anchored his ships in Botany Bay for six weeks after the British first arrived. At least one of their company died during this period and was buried on the shore of the bay.

However, had the French infected the local population, the outbreak would have started in the early months of 1788, not more than a year later.

Subsequent commentators have suggested that unsuspecting Makasar fishermen brought smallpox to Australia’s north, after which it travelled down well-established trade routes. However, given the relatively high population densities required for the disease to spread, and the fact that those infected quickly become incapable of walking, any such outbreak is unlikely to have spread across the desert trade routes.

A more likely source of the disease was the ‘variolas matter’ Surgeon John White brought with him on the First Fleet. ‘Variolas matter’ is pus taken from a recovering smallpox sufferer and sealed in a glass bottle to isolate and preserve it. White intended to use it to variolate any children born in the settlement. Research in the 1970s has shown that the smallpox virus withstands a wide range of temperatures and humidity and remains viable over many years.

How this material could have infected the local tribes is unknown. The appalling devastation it wrought probably silenced anyone in the colony who might have known.


Effect on Aboriginal people

Smallpox spread across the country with the advance of European settlement, bringing with it shocking death rates. The disease affected entire generations of the Indigenous population and survivors were in many cases left without family or community leaders.

The spread of smallpox was followed by influenza, measles, tuberculosis and sexually transmitted diseases, all of which Australia’s Aboriginal people had no resistance to, and all of which brought widespread death.

(via The National Museum of Australia)

These 12 Haunting Pictures From Old Mental Institutions Guaranteed to Creep You Out!

Psychiatry has come a long way since the days when patients were shunned from society and shackled in loony bins. Psychiatrists of yore experimented with numerous techniques for treating mental disorders - some that paved the way for psychiatry and are even used today. But quite a few others would raise eyebrows today and make modern-day ethicists squirm.

There are still many unanswered questions, and too many seemingly insurmountable medical challenges for comfort, but at least science tries to point toward answers.

In decades and centuries past, illnesses, both physical and mental were often treated with ineffective, inhumane, and often destructive ways in old insane asylums. People with psychological conditions, especially, tended to be viewed as subhuman. These unfortunate souls were born in the wrong era, and their stories are heartbreaking.

1. A “Lunatics Chair” given to patients who had poor behavior or wild outbursts in a Dutch mental hospital in 1938.

2. Patients receive treatment while restrained in a steam box in Milledgeville State Hospital in Georgia, US in 1908.

3. A patient in a restraining chair at the West Riding Lunatic Asylum in Wakefield, Yorkshire, England in 1869.

4. A nurse prepares a patient for electro-shock therapy in Central State Hospital in Kentucky, US in 1951.

5. Mental patients participating in Dance Therapy in New York State Asylum, U.S in 1922.

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125 Reasons You Could End Up in a Lunatic Asylum in the 19th Century

Reasons for admission into the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia from 1864 to 1889 included laziness, egotism, disappointed love, female disease, mental excitement, cold, snuff, greediness, imaginary female trouble, “gathering in the head,” exposure and quackery, jealousy, religion, asthma, masturbation, and bad habits. Spouses used lunacy laws to rid themselves of their partners and in abducting their children.

The diseases attributed to those admitted to the hospital from its opening in 1864 through 1880 were varied, with the most common being 304 patients with chronic dementia, 254 with acute mania, 225 with melancholia, and 165 with chronic mania. Listings were given of the supposed causes of the diseases, and they were labeled supposed causes, with the physicians of the time feeling “a little unease with them,” they still published them. Most common at Weston were the 359 who were “not assigned” a cause, and “heredity,” and “epilepsy” ranked next. Forty to fifty patients were attributed each of the following causes: “intemperance,” “ill health,” “menstrual,” “traumatic injury,” and “masturbation.” One honest man was listed with “masturbation for 30 years.”

REASONS FOR ADMISSION
WEST VIRGINIA HOSPITAL FOR THE INSANE (WESTON)
OCTOBER 22, 1864 to DECEMBER 12, 1889

1. Amenorrhea
2. Asthma
3. Bad company
4. Bad habits & political excitement
5. Bad whiskey
6. Bite of a rattle snake
7. Bloody flux
8. Brain fever
9. Business nerves
10. Carbonic acid gas
11. Carbuncle
12. Cerebral softening
13. Cold
14. Congestion of brain
15. Constitutional
16. Crime
17. Death of sons in the war
18. Decoyed into the army
19. Deranged masturbation
20. Desertion by husband
21. Diphtheria
22. Disappointed affection
23. Disappointed love
24. Disappointment
25. Dissipation of nerves
26. Dissolute habits
27. Dog bite
28. Domestic affliction
29. Domestic trouble
30. Doubt about mother’s ancestors
31. Dropsy
32. Effusion on the brain
33. Egotism
34. Epileptic fits
35. Excessive sexual abuse
36. Excitement as officer
37. Explosion of shell nearby
38. Exposure & hereditary
39. Exposure & quackery
40. Exposure in army
41. Fall from horse
42. False confinement
43. Feebleness of intellect
44. Fell from horse
45. Female disease
46. Fever
47. Fever & loss of law suit
48. Fever & nerved
49. Fighting fire
50. Fits & desertion of husband
51. Gastritis
52. Gathering in the head
53. Greediness
54. Grief
55. Gunshot wound
56. Hard study
57. Hereditary predisposition
58. Ill treatment by husband
59. Imaginary female trouble
60. Immoral life
61. Imprisonment
62. Indigestion
63. Intemperance
64. Interference
65. Jealousy
66. Jealousy & religion
67. Kick of horse
68. Kicked in the head by a horse
69. Laziness
70. Liver and social disease
71. Loss of arm
72. Marriage of son
73. Masturbation & syphilis
74. Masturbation for 30 years
75. Medicine to prevent conception
76. Menstrual deranged
77. Mental excitement
78. Milk fever
79. Moral sanity
80. Novel reading
81. Nymphomania
82. Opium habit
83. Over action on the mind
84. Over heat
85. Over study of religion
86. Over taxing mental powers.
87. Parents were cousins
88. Pecuniary losses: worms
89. Periodical fits
90. Political excitement
91. Politics
92. Puerperal
93. Religious enthusiasm
94. Religious excitement
95. Remorse
96. Rumor of husband’s murder or desertion
97. Salvation army
98. Scarlatina
99. Seduction
100. Seduction & disappointment
101. Self abuse
102. Severe labor
103. Sexual abuse and stimulants
104. Sexual derangement
105. Shooting of daughter
106. Smallpox
107. Snuff
108. Snuff eating for two years
109. Softening of the brain
110. Spinal irritation
111. Sun stroke
112. Sunstroke
113. Superstition
114. Suppressed masturbation
115. Suppression of menses
116. Tabacco & masturbation: hysteria
117. The war
118. Time of life
119. Trouble
120. Uterine derangement
121. Venereal excesses
122. Vicious vices in early life
123. Women
124. Women trouble
125. Young lady & fear

According to Snopes, although this list is frequently posted as a joke, it is somewhat rooted in truth. The list was compiled from the log book of the West Virginia Hospital for the Insane, documenting admissions to that institution between 1864 and 1889 and has been published or referenced in several books and research papers. It has also been archived by the West Virginia Division of Culture and History.

The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum (TALA) in the mountains of Weston, West Virginia, holds many dark and disturbing stories. Later known as the Weston State Hospital, TALA was a Kirkbride psychiatric hospital, constructed from 1858-1881 and in operation from 1864 until 1994. The main building is one of the largest hand-cut stone masonry buildings in the United States.

Although this list was sourced from a contemporaneous hospital log, its entries should not be considered as denoting things that were all considered symptoms of mental instability. Rather, among patients who were treated at West Virginia Hospital for the Insane for various illnesses such as chronic dementia, acute mania, and melancholia, these entries recorded the reasons or causes why those patients were said to have developed their underlying maladies. That is, people didn’t think that novel reading, asthma, the marriage of one’s child, politics, or falling from a horse were symptoms of mental illness, but rather factors that might have produced or exacerbated such an illness.

Official Baby Care Guides by the Department of Hygiene, Kansas State Board of Health From the Early 20th Century

When it comes to childrearing advice, we’ve come a long way, baby.

Modern parenting isn’t easy. Childcare books and blogs are filled with so much contradictory advice, it makes you want to throw your own tantrum. But there’s good news: You don’t live in centuries past, when baby advice wasn’t merely contradictory; it was also bizarre and borderline criminal.

Below are some baby care guides from the Kansas State Board of Health from between the 1900s and 1920s:

A poster issued by the Kansas State Board of Health, outlining good infant care.

This poster, issued by the Kansas State Board of Health, informs parents about the danger and treatment of Infantile Conjunctivitis and how to avoid needless blindness in children.

This poster, issued by the Kansas State Board of Health, includes information on good baby care.

This poster, issued by the Kansas State Board of Health, illustrates how to bathe a baby.

This poster, issued by the Kansas State Board of Health, informs parents how to safely insure their baby has fresh air for his health.

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Graphic Illustrations Reveal the Horror of Surgical Removal of Unwanted Parts of the Human Body During the 19th Century

With the beginning of meaningful American contributions to surgical literature in the early 19th century, the manifold epic events that enlivenour country’s surgical past began to receive wide dissemination. Of the various surgical texts published in this still preanesthetic period (ie, prior to fall 1846), the most physically impressive and artistically dazzling is Joseph Pancoast’s (1805-1882) massive A Treatise on Operative Surgery. With 80 quarto plates comprising 486 separate illustrations and 380pages of description, the tome’s most distinguishing features are the wonderfully executed lithographs, many of which are from drawings of surgical operations by Pancoast.

Professor of anatomy and surgery at Jefferson Medical College, Pancoast developed a number of new operations, including the first successful plastic operation for exstrophy of the bladder, the “plow and groove” suture for rhinoplasty, and the neurosurgical procedure of sectioning the second and third branches of the fifth pair of nerves as they emerge from the base of the brain. His Treatise also includes one of the earliest accounts of a free skin graft, used in this case in the reconstruction of an earlobe.

Below are some of images from the book. Yes, they are, most definitely, if not outright terrifying!

Hand painted wood engraving showing the necessary position for the patient for removal of bladder stones.

Plate 55, J. Pancoast, A treatise on operative surgery, 1846.

Plate XLIX. Surgery to correct strabismus, involving the division of the internal rectus of the right eye. Strabismus is the misalignment of the eyes.

Removing cataracts

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Magic Massage From Dr. Swift

Victorian era advertisement for a massage treatment to cure female “hysteria.” You don’t have to be Einstein to figure out exactly what the “doctor” is doing, and as shocking as it may seem to modern sensibilities, treatments such as this were considered perfectly acceptable in the 19th and early 20th century.

The ad definitely appears to say that “His Home Treatment, which cures the patient in the privacy of their home without the knowledge of any one, is creating a profound sensation because it is curing the hopeless and those pronounced incurable for all disease of the mid-quarters from neck to knee.”

But man, who was (is) Dr. Swift?

Dr. Young's Ideal Rectal Dilators Were a Real Thing!

Dr. Young’s Dilators were a real medical device sold in the United States from the late nineteenth century until at least the 1940s. They were a set of four “torpedolike” hard-rubber (later, plastic) instruments varying in diameter from ​¹⁄₂ to 1 inch and in length from 3 to 4 inches.

Dr. Young himself praised rectal dilation as a cure for insanity, claiming that at least “three-fourths of all the howling maniacs of the world” were curable “in a few weeks’ time by the application of orificial methods”. Young also admitted that some patients panicked at the sight of the devices.

The product claimed it corrected constipation, promoted more refreshing sleep, and could relieve foul breath, bad taste in the mouth, sallow skin, acne, anemia, lassitude, mental hebetude, insomnia, anorexia, headaches, diarrhea, hemorrhoids, flatulence, indigestion, nervousness, irritability, cold extremities, and numerous other ailments. The instructions warned, “Do not neglect to use your Dilators ... It is advisable to use [them] occasionally as a precautionary measure. You need have no fear of using them too much”.

A 1905 advertisement by F. E. Young and Co. of Chicago promised that “The best results may be obtained by the use of Young’s self-retaining rectal dilators”, the use of which “accomplishes for the invalid just what nature does daily for the healthy individual”. Doctors were advised that “If you will prescribe a set of these dilators in some of your obstinate cases of Chronic Constipation you will find them necessary in every case of this kind”. The price of a set “to the profession” was $2.50 (equivalent to $70 in 2018).

An advertisement by F. E. Young and Co. of Chicago on Detroit Medical Journal, August 1905.

It wasn’t until 1938 that the new US Federal Food, Drugs and Cosmetics Act encompassed the sale of medical devices, and once that was in force it didn’t take long for the dilators to attract the courts’ attention. In 1940, a shipment of dilators and their lubricant, Piloment, was seized at New York and the US Attorney for the Southern District of NY filed libels against them, alleging that they were misbranded.

The hearing accepted that “it would be dangerous to health when used with the frequency and duration prescribed, recommended, or suggested in the following labeling,” and the consignment was condemned and destroyed – one of many examples of a potentially useful product falling foul of claims beyond what it could really achieve.

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Do You Need a Lobotomy? Just Look at the Results From These Before and After Photo Comparisons of Lobotomy Patients

Today, the word “lobotomy” is rarely mentioned. If it is, it’s usually the butt of a joke. But in the 20th century, a lobotomy became a legitimate alternative treatment for serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia and severe depression. Physicians even used it to treat chronic or severe pain and backaches. There’s a surprising history of the lobotomy for its use in mental health.

Lobotomy (from the Greek lobos, meaning lobes of the brain, and tomos, meaning cut) is a psychosurgical procedure in which the connections the prefrontal cortex and underlying structures are severed, or the frontal cortical tissue is destroyed, the theory being that this leads to the uncoupling of the brain’s emotional centers and the seat of intellect (in the subcortical structures and the frontal cortex, respectively).

The lobotomy was first performed on humans in the 1890s. About half a century later, it was being touted by some as a miracle cure for mental illness, and its use became widespread; during its heyday in the 1940s and ’50s, the lobotomy was performed on some 40,000 patients in the United States, and on around 10,000 in Western Europe. The procedure became popular because there was no alternative, and because it was seen to alleviate several social crises: overcrowding in psychiatric institutions, and the increasing cost of caring for mentally ill patients.

An excellent account of the effects of lobotomy, and of the ethical implications of the use of the procedure, can be found in Ken Kesey’s book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. (This was made into a film in 1975, by Milos Forman, who received the Academy Award for Best Director. Jack Nicholson won the award for Best Actor in a Lead Role.)

The use of lobotomies began to decline in the mid- to late-1950s, for several reasons. Firstly, although there had always been critics of the technique, opposition to its use became very fierce. Secondly, and most importantly, phenothiazine-based neuroleptic (anti-psychotic) drugs, such as chlorpromazine, became widely available. These had much the same effect as psychosurgery gone wrong; thus, the surgical method was quickly superseded by the chemical lobotomy.

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Back in the ’50s There Was "Cigarette Psychology" – 9 Ways of Holding Your Cigarette and What It Says About You

Have you ever noticed that cigarette holding style of one person differ from another? Some people prefer holding cigarette between thumb and index figure while others enjoy it holding between index and middle finger. Are these different cigarettes’ holding styles revealing anything about their personality traits? Your guess is absolutely right.

The way a man holds his cigarette — along with such personal gestures as how he walks, sits, his nervous habits and hand motions—is a sure sign of his inner self. This is an article from a 1959 issue of Caper Magazine showing Dr. William Neutra’s analysis of personality, based on how people hold their cigarettes. It helps expose —or of least give a clue to—many otherwise hard-to-dig-up facts needed in treating the patient successfully.

These are seven examples of what Dr. Neutro has found out about men; also, two examples of ways women hold cigarettes. Curiously enough, however, the cigarette psychology doesn’t work on women. According to Dr. Neutro, women are so affected naturally in their regular posture that they’re more often than not too conscious of how they hold a cigarette, and therefore useless as subjects for this experiment.

1. Just a guess for this female mannerism: insecure, afraid to lose that cigarette. She probably holds on to her man like glue.

2. Typical grasp of a female bored with her date. She has to concentrate on the tip to keep from yawning.

3. Dr. Neutra claims this man is an intellectual, a very brainy type of guy, a contemplative character.

4. This person is generally unreliable, weak, hard to live with, and inclined to excessive lying.

5. Very tense individual, direct, straight-forward, inclined towards stubbornness.

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Faces From the Front: Incredible Before and After Photos Show World War I Soldiers’ Horrific Facial Injuries

These incredible before and after photographs show how British and French soldiers had to have their faces completely rebuilt having been maimed during World War One.

The photos are part of a book, Faces from the Front, looking at the early development of plastic surgery. It highlights the work of young surgeon Harold Gillies, who repaired the faces of those who were injured and shipped back home between 1914 and 1918.

Mr Gillies spent years restoring the dignity of men who had been prepared to sacrifice their lives. His incredible skill saw him use a rib to reconstruct a jaw. He also spent six years and 19 operations restoring a cheek, upper lip and nose of another soldier.

Impressive before and after images of Private Harold Page, of the Norfolk Regiment, who lost an eye in the Battle of the Somme.

Private William Thomas of the 1st Cheshire Regiment on the first day of his admission (left) and his final appearance (right).

Captain J.G.H Budd shown in May 1919 who had reconstructive surgery on his nose.

Private Arthur Mears is captured during treatment (left) and afterwards (right) following the repair of his jaw using his rib.

Lieutenant T.H. Elderton, of the 3rd Batallion, Bedford Regiment, before the war (left); on admission to Sidcup on February 10 1918 (center) and after being worked on by Harold Gillies (right).

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