26. The Nineteenth Century Solution to the Problem of “Female Hysteria”
The cliché “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” is often used as a shortcut for the notion that men and women are incomprehensible to one another. However, if there was any period in history when reality actually matched the cliche, it was probably during the Victorian Era. Back then, people – especially men – understood very little about female sexuality.
In the late nineteenth, women who exhibited a variety of symptoms such as depression, fatigue anxiety, or loss of sexual appetite, were diagnosed with “female hysteria”. The solution according to the era’s medical establishment was a pelvic massage to bring about a “female paroxysm” – 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.