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Odd Solutions to Historic Problems

Khalid Elhassan December 9, 2020 32 min

United States - American Civil War — Young recruits during the Vietnam War, circa 1967. History

25. For Millennia, Doctors Saw Female Orgasms as Medical Oddities

As seen above, the Victorian Era viewed female orgasms as medical oddities – the province of professional physicians who induced them in order to calm down “hysterical” women. To be fair to Victorians, they did not invent such treatments to combat “female hysteria”.

That diagnosis dates all the way back to Hippocrates, circa 450 BC, and it persisted throughout the Middle Ages. However, the late Victorians can be credited with picking it up and running away with it in their quest for a solution to the problem of hysterical women.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.