22. Curing “Female Hysteria”
The cliché “Men are from Mars, women are from Venus” is frequently used as a shortcut for expressing the notion that men and women are incomprehensible to one another. However, if there was any period in history when reality actually matched the cliché, it was probably during the Victorian Era. Back then, people – particularly men – understood very little about female sexuality.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, women who exhibited a variety of symptoms such as depression, fatigue anxiety, or loss of sexual appetite were diagnosed with “female hysteria”. The prescribed medical treatment was a pelvic massage to bring about a “female paroxysm”. That was Victorian speak for “orgasm”. A doctor would insert his fingers inside a patient’s vagina, and manually massage her vulva and clitoral region until she had an orgasm, which would supposedly cure whatever was ailing her.
