Female Hysteria

Thought it would be interesting to see what was out there about the old notion of "female hysteria" - especially after reading in Bonk about the doctor office treatments for women suffering such 'disease'. Check it out:

http://19thcentury.wordpress.com/2007/12/05/female-hysteria/

Female hysteria

December 5, 2007 by 19thcentury

In 1859, it was claimed that a quarter of all women suffered from hysteria. This number makes sense if you consider that there was a 75-page catalogue with possible symptoms, and this list was seen as incomplete. Some of the symptoms of female hysteria are faintness, nervousness, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in the abdomen, muscle spasms, shortness of breath, irritability and a loss of appetite for food.
The exact cause of hysteria is not clearly defined, except that is was a ‘womb disease.’ According to the Victorians, it had either to do with pent-up fluids in the female body, stress of modern-day life, or the ‘wanderings of the womb.’ It was definately an upper-class disease, an American physician expressed pleasure that the country was ‘catching up’ to Europe in the prevalence of hysteria.

Luckily, there was a temporary solution for hysteria (hysteria was a chronic disease so it could never be fully cured.) The woman suffering from hysteria would go to the doctor for a ‘pelvic massage to the point of hysterical paroxysm.’ The doctors thought this to be a very tedious task indeed, and due to this, the first vibrators were invented: around 1870 the first ones were in use by physicians.