Myths and truths about the origins of the vibrator



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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.

They used the vibrator to bring patients to bad, thus sparing them of a daunting manual task.

It 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 The technology of bad: "Hysteria", the vibrator and badual satisfaction Women the vibrator and female badual satisfaction, "in free translation." The 1999 publication was written by historian Rachel Maines, currently a visiting scholar at Cornell University.

Despite the tremendous popularity and dedication of this book – including the Herbert Feis Award from the American History Association in 1999 – according to a new article published in Journal of Positive Sexuality the theory it addresses has This historian-led study is the latest to refute the book's claims – and this is true both for the history of baduality and for the popular imagination.

img src = "https://media.metrolatam.com/2019/01/03/1046159953-d9bff249b870a626b57f5c3983fa4c74-1200×0.jpg" alt = "" As far as we know from the history of baduality, it seems little likely that doctors do it (bad patients as a form of treatment), "says Hallie Lieberman, a technology historian at the Institute of Technology. Georgia 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 have been marketed to doctors, not directly to consumers.

And therefore, there would have never been a case where doctors, without understanding what female bad was, used such devices to cure women with hysteria.

Throughout the nineteenth century, electric vibrators were marketed in magazines, periodicals, medical publications and newspapers.

In 1904, a relaxed sitting woman's 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", indicates the brochure. "We get infinitely better treatment results."

In another leaflet, the treatment is not administered 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 serious-faced woman dressed in a white ruffle dress holds the vibrator on her forehead, chin, throat and chest.

<img src = "https://media.metrolatam.com/2019/01/03/1046159992-4f2623f3120bed5e1d13f616f36e6129-1200×0.jpg" alt = "When Rachel Maines, author of the book The Technology of Orgasm stumbled upon these advertisements, they intrigued her. "For the next 19 years, I did research in libraries in the United States and Europe to try to find out more on the history of vibrators, "he explains." There was not a lot of material in the primary sources, so he was 19 years old and I ended up writing a book. "

The book describes how vibrators are 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. that doctors used masturbation to treat hysteria in women since the time r omaine

Doctors have relieved the condition causing "paroxysms" in women by masturbation. But because of the misunderstanding of female baduality, doctors were not aware that the paroxysms felt by their patients were actually a badual response.

Female Sexuality

Female baduality may not have received as much attention as baduality. Historically, it seems unlikely that Hallie Lieberman thinks that Victorian-era doctors would have done it for total lack of knowledge.

"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 on the 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 quoted concerns the treatment of menstrual pain with electrical currents. The author points out that, for patients with menstrual pain, "the total absence of badual arousal 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 to accept Lieberman 's criticism, although they did not change their minds. "It is quite fitting that a young researcher is challenging the work of older specialists," he explains.

"In The Technology of Orgasm what I propose is an badumption . very convincing hypothesis – OK, we will not agree on this, "added the researcher.

Good vibrations

We know that vibrators were used in the body as a panacea for almost all Brochures have proclaimed its effectiveness against insomnia, paralysis, neuralgia, epilepsy, consumption, sciatica, lumbar pain, gout, deafness, vomiting, constipation, Hemorrhoids and sore throats It was good for the liver and even for health problems in children, the literature pointed out.

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Hysteria also figured on the list of conditions treated by the vibrator.But for these patients, the vibrator was probably more used for a relaxing mbadage of the back or neck than for any type of erotic use, says Lieberman. [19659002] "Regarding the mbadage of the woman to bad, nothing proves that it happened in the doctor's office," he says.

There may even have been "questionable doctors," she adds, who were harboring patients. But nothing proves that the use of vibrators for masturbation is 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," says King .

But this was not a common practice in ancient civilizations. allowing doctors to get closer to women at home, 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 she reaches bad is very different from saying that doctors do that," says King . "It's a satire – it's outrageous."

Meanwhile, old medical texts describing doctors mbadaging the lumbar, knee or head were mistakenly interpreted by Maines as a somewhat different kind of mbadage, according to King. 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 ". [19659010

The answer to some of the announcements that Maines encountered was found – although some scholars now believe that their interpretations are misleading.

The Reality

But if it's not the doctors who finally invented the vibrator as a bad toy? When doctors began to realize, at the beginning of the 20th century, that vibrators were not the sacred remedy they thought, device makers had 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.

A company adopted a bold strategy in 1903 by launching an advertisement for the Hygeia bad device for men and women.

"It sounded like a belt with electricity and vibrations," says Lieberman

This was the first source of bad vibrator 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 have for many years prevented businesses from advertising devices for badual pleasure.

The strategy of selling vibrators directly to consumers was reinforced in 1915, when The American Medical Association declared that vibrators for medical use were "illusions and traps". 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 vibrator industry, manufacturers simply turned away from doctors to consumers.

"These ads were seen in the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and elsewhere in 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 contested, Maines continues to defend his theory.

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 points out, when people want a story to be true, even academics rarely worry about checking the facts.

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