Vibrators were medical inventions to cure women's 'hysteria'

Vibrators began in thew 1880s as a common medical device popular with doctors who had been spending up to several hours with female patients to help them achieve "hysterical paroxysm," today known as orgasm.

Vibrators were created to treat female hysteria, a disorder doctors and midwives treated by massaging the genitals. Before vibrators, doctors did the "pelvic massage" by hand, which some doctors complained was difficult and time-consuming, said Rachel Maines, author of "Technology of Orgasm: 'Hysteria,' the Vibrator and Women's Sexual Satisfaction" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).

Hysteria, which has been treated with massage since at least 450 B.C., is no longer acknowledged by the medical community, Maines said. (Greeks used the handle end of water-powered saws as massagers, Maines said.)

Hysteria was always a rather loosely defined chronic and incurable ailment that came with extremely vague symptoms such as headaches, sleeplessness, anxiety, irritability, heaviness in the abdomen, sexual fantasy and vaginal lubrication, Maines said in a telephone interview.

"It was thought to be caused by a neglected uterus," Maines said. "You treated it by getting fragrant oils and massaging until a discharge of fluid."
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