My Fight 4 MY KIDS!

Hysteria is an illness that no longer exists, it afflicted women throughout history until the early to mid 1900’s. But why were women the only ones susceptible to this sickness? And why did doctors start providing pelvic massages and prescribing vibrators to cure it?

The first step in understanding Hysteria is to understand where the word came from. Hysteria is derived from an ancient Greek word, ‘hystera’, which means uterus.

Unfortunately for the uterus it has had a long, and unhappy history, some in the medical field thought that it would reach out into the rest of the body, causing sickness and disease. Others thought it made women crazy if over stimulated.

Since the uterus had such a bad reputation it was easy for doctors to blame many unknown illnesses on it, and since Hysteria was caused by the uterus overwhelming the woman it belonged to and making her crazy, it was simple enough to call everything not understood Hysteria.

Throughout history nobody really understood how the female reproductive system worked, that’s why it was so easy to blame everything on it. But for some reason many doctors found that there was a trend in those who suffered from Hysteria, these tended to be nuns, virgins, widows and even a few housewives. So what do all these women have in common?

The possibly obvious answer to that question is sex, or rather, the deprivation thereof. Women were considered to be weak and rather susceptible to mental instability and many doctors believed that bringing a woman to “hysterical paroxysm” would treat Hysteria. What is “hysterical paroxysm”? In today’s terms we would refer to is as an orgasm.

But women couldn’t masturbate, that was a horrible, disgusting self-indulgence. So what? What could women do? There were doctors out there who could help, by providing controlled pelvic massages doctors could induce this “hysterical paroxysm” in women.

But unfortunately for the doctors this process was often very long, even taking up to a few hours. Spending that much of a day for just one patient was definitely not profitable. But to help them, in the mid 1800’s some doctors were able to use a water hose to massage the pelvic region.

But thankfully in 1873 a new tool was created and first used in an asylum in France to treat Hysteria. This tool was called a electromechanical vibrator. This wondrous tool allowed doctors to help their patients in a matter of minutes, not hours.

In the very early 1900’s in-home electricity was on the rise allowing the sales of vibrators to become much more wide spread. In 1918 you could find a home vibrator advertised in the Sears catalogue that they claimed was “Very useful and satisfactory for home service.”

That started the wonderful vibrator movement, women could now enjoy themselves at home, safely, without masturbating, all to keep them healthy, sane and Hysteria-free, which all lead to the creation of newer, more wonderful vibrators such as the Layaspot.

These days women would have a tough time convincing anybody they had Hysteria and that’s why they need to keep their vibrators around. But thankfully they don’t have to.

It seems logical to guess what happened might have played a part in women’s adult products being much more established than male sex toys such as the Fleshlight or other types of male masturbators. Then again, maybe it has absolutely nothing to do with it.