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When Opium Was a Cure-All Remedy, and Other Unusual Historic Medical Cures

Khalid Elhassan April 10, 2025 16 min

Remedy - Flagellants thought that flogging themselves would ward off the plague — Flagellants thought that flogging themselves would ward off the plague. Pits Perilous

7. Victorian Doctors Used High Pressure Water Hoses and Steam Powered “Intimate Massagers” to Calm Down Female Patients

victorian women. yesterdays thimble — Victorian women. Yesterday’s Thimble

The remedy of inducing “female paroxysm” in patients was a time consuming task. It was difficult to teach and learn, could take an hour or more, and often caused wrist fatigue – carpal tunnel syndrome, as we would call it today. In a nutshell, doctors were getting sore wrists from fingering female patients to climax. So they began to turn to other means. One alternative to fingering was a water massage: a physician would direct a powerful stream of water at a woman’s vagina. Another was mechanical “intimate” massagers. The first steam-powered massager, fueled by packing coal into a furnace, was invented in 1869. However, such intimate massagers were bulky contraptions, some as big as a dining room table. They took up too much space in doctors’ offices, and were too cumbersome to tote around in a medical kit for house visits.

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.