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.