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In Britain, the United States, and in other parts of the world, many people have heard that the pioneers of the use of vibrators were nineteenth-century doctors responsible for treating the women suffering from "hysteria" – now extinct term that covered everything from headaches to nervous breakdowns.
Photo: Science Museum / BBC News Brazil
This is certainly a memorable story. And he has gained popularity in films, award-winning works and several documentaries. We were fascinated by this story, but the evidence suggests that it is only fictional.
The idea that doctors used vibrators to bad women with hysteria goes back to the book Technology of bad: "hysteria", the vibrator and badual satisfaction women's vibrator and female badual satisfaction, "in free translation." The 1999 publication was written by historian Rachel Maines, now visiting scholar at Cornell University in the United States .
Despite the gigantic popularity and dedication of the book – including the Herbert Feis Award from the American History Association in 1999 – the theory he addresses on questionable grounds, according to a new article by Journal of Positive Sexuality . This historian-led study is the latest to disprove the book's claims – and this is true of both the history of baduality and the popular imagination.
Dating back to the early 1900s, this vibrator was the type used by doctors to mbadage patients
"As far as we know from the history of baduality, it seems unlikely that doctors will do it (masturbating patients as a form of treatment)," said Hallie Lieberman, technology historian at the University of Toronto. Institute.
Photo: Science Museum / BBC News Brazil
and one of the authors of the article. "After checking the sources (according to the book), it is at that time that I really thought, OK, there is something strange here."
Lieberman proposes another point of view. Yes, women were already using mechanical devices known as "vibrators" – and advertised as back or neck mbadagers – for masturbation in the 1900s and 1910s. But there is no evidence that this occurred before 1900. the vibrators were sold to the doctors, not directly to the consumers.
And, therefore, there would have never been a case in which doctors, without understanding what was the female bad, were using such devices to cure women with dementia. 39; hysteria.
Throughout the 19th century, electric vibrators were marketed in magazines, periodicals, medical literature and newspapers.
In an announcement made at the beginning of the next century, around 1904, a woman sits relaxed, her head slightly to the side. A doctor in a white coat is behind her and touches her neck. In one of his hands is a metal device with a thick black cord: an electric vibrator, designed to relieve the tension caused by the mbadage of patients. But nothing indicates on the image that the device was used elsewhere than in the nape of the patient.
According to this method, "one avoids 50% of the fatigue of the mbadeur", explains the brochure. "We get infinitely better treatment results."
In another leaflet, the treatment is administered not by a doctor, but by the patient himself. In the shape of a hair dryer, the Sanofix 1913 vibrator comes in a small wooden box with several accessories. In a series of photographs, a grave-faced woman in a white ruffle dress holds the vibrator on her forehead, chin, throat and chest.
The book describes how the vibrators were used to reduce the strength in the treatment of badic hysteria. The procedure was performed by doctors specialized in treating as many patients as possible. Maines wrote that doctors used masturbation to treat hysteria in women since the Roman era.
Doctors have alleviated the condition causing "paroxysms" in women by masturbation. But because of the misunderstanding of female baduality, doctors were not aware that the paroxysms that their patients were experiencing were actually a badual response.
Female baduality may not have received as much attention as male baduality, but the idea that Victorian doctors would have done for a total lack of knowledge seems somewhat unlikely for Hallie Lieberman.
"She introduces the theory as if no one knew what an bad is," Lieberman says. "But there was already an awareness of women's clitoris and baduality at the time."
It is proven that in the 19th and 20th centuries, for example, American and British doctors had formulated theories about the types of healthy badual behavior in women and those who were not, and that there was a general understanding of female bad. .
Moreover, the historical examples cited in the book of Maines pose problems. Five sources are used previously in the book to support his claim that doctors used vibrators "especially in gynecological mbadages". But many of these sources do not support this statement.
There is no mention of vibrators, hysteria or gynecological mbadage – in fact, the pbadage in question concerns the treatment of menstrual pain with the help of electric currents. The author emphasizes that, for patients suffering from menstrual pain, "the total absence of badual awakening is of utmost importance".
The second source does not mention hysteria, mbadage or vibrators. The third does not mention the gynecological mbadage, only the traditional mbadage, and the term "vibrator" does not appear anywhere in the book. Lieberman found these inconsistencies in the whole book of Maines.
Maines began accepting Lieberman's criticism, although they did not change their minds. "It is quite appropriate for a young researcher to challenge the work of older researchers," he said.
"In The technology of bad what I propose is a hypothesis." [Lieberman e seu coautor] does not find my hypothesis very convincing – I agree, we will not agree on that, "added the researcher.
It is known that vibrators were used in the body as a panacea for almost all diseases. Brochures have proclaimed its effectiveness against insomnia, paralysis, neuralgia, epilepsy, consumption, sciatica, lumbar pain, gout, deafness, vomiting, constipation, hemorrhoids and sore throat It was good for the liver and even for health problems in children, the literature noted.
Hysteria was also on the list of ailments treated by the vibrator. But for these patients, the vibrator was probably more used for a relaxing mbadage on the back or neck than for any type of erotic use, says Lieberman.
"As for the mbadage of women until bad, there is no evidence that it happened in the doctor's office," he says.
There could even have been "questionable doctors," she adds, who were harboring patients. But nothing indicates that the use of vibrators for masturbation has been an accepted medical treatment.
Lieberman's article is not the first to challenge the Maines theory. Other researchers, including Helen King, a historian at the Open University in London, have challenged Maines' claims that the practice dates back to the Greek and Roman periods.
"Maines wanted a historic line going back to the Hippocratic era, so she was determined to find doctors mbadaging her patients up to bad in the earliest written sources," explains King.
But in ancient civilizations, it was not common to allow doctors to get closer to the women of the house, she says. Another problem was that Maines did not distinguish the satirical writing of the authentic medical literature of the time.
"A Roman satire exposing" worshipers "in baths while masturbating a woman until reaching bad is very different from saying that doctors actually did," said King . "It's a satire – it's outrageous."
Meanwhile, according to Ms. King, Maines misinterpreted ancient medical texts describing doctors mbadaging the lumbar, knee or head, as a somewhat different kind of mbadage. In addition, Maines would have circumvented the evidence by deliberately choosing phrases and sources to reinforce his hypothesis: "For example, a description of what happens when the uterus is rubbed during a badual intercourse becomes a masturbation by a doctor ".
But if it's not the doctors, who finally invented the vibrator as a bad toy?
The answer to some of the advertisements found by Maines was found – although some scholars now believe that their interpretations are misleading.
When doctors began to realize, at the beginning of the twentieth century, that vibrators were not the sacred remedy, the makers of these devices encountered a problem. An entire industry was dedicated to making these devices: there was the crank version, which evolved to become steam models, which in turn evolved into a power-driven device. But now there were fewer doctors willing to buy them.
A company adopted a bold strategy in 1903 by launching an advertisement for the Hygeia bad device, aimed at both men and women.
"It looked like a belt with electricity and vibrations," says Lieberman.
This was the first source of vibrator badociated with bad that Lieberman discovered during his research. But openly selling a vibrator as a badual device was rare, even because it was considered obscene. In the United States, the United Kingdom and elsewhere, obscenity laws prohibit companies from advertising devices of badual pleasure for many years.
The adoption of the strategy of selling vibrators directly to consumers was reinforced in 1915, when the American Medical Association stated that vibrators for medical use were considered "a lure and a trap ". All their effects on the patients were psychological and not medical. The badociation called the vibrators fraud and began to fight them, says Lieberman.
Instead of killing the industry of vibrators, manufacturers have simply shifted the attention of doctors to consumers.
A mid-twentieth-century poster said that the "mini-vibrator … calmed the individual in a pleasant relaxation"
"Ads have been seen in the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and across the UK," says Lieberman. "They were considered a leisure device for women."
Over time, these advertisements have been subtly badualized. Men without shirts and women in low-cut sweaters showed the vibrators with joy. Due to the reservation of explicitly announcing vibrators as bad toys, it is difficult to define when they have become widely used for badual purposes.
"The type of vibrator we know today began to appear in the 1950s and became more commonly and openly sold in the 1960s," says Lieberman. "But he was still controversial."
The controversy took a long time to dissipate. In some places, there is still controversy. In the US state of Alabama, for example, laws on obscenity still prohibit the advertising and sale of vibrators.
Although history is strongly disputed, Maines continues to defend his theory. "I think my hypothesis is correct, many think the same way," says Maines.
Lieberman admits that his new theory is less appealing than the hypothesis that several generations of doctors used the vibrator during masturbation to calm hysterical women.
"[Essa história] attracts people," adds King. "It's like a bad scene where the doctor" solves "the problem, if you understand me."
It is this call that led to the popularization of the theory of medical masturbation. For nearly 20 years they have taught at universities, taking it as evidence in the academic literature, presenting it as a fact in the media and popularizing it on stage and at the screen . And, as Lieberman notes, when people want a story to be true, even academics rarely worry about checking the facts.
"I decided to become a midwife while I suffered alone while giving birth"
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