In the 1880s women who were experiencing anxiety or hysteria* would go to the doctor, where they would receive ‘vulva stimulation’ until to the point of orgasm.
The answer to all female medical problems was to bring them to orgasm. And it was purely for medical purposes.
At the time, masturbation was not encouraged at home, for either sex, as it was considered wrong. One Muslim scholar and founder of early modern medicine said, “women should not resort to rubbing,” it was he who advised that it was, “a man’s job, suitable only for husbands and doctors”. After all, husbands and doctors are one in the same, no?
The use of the vibrator in the medical world was not considered sexual because penetration was the only form of sex, so not penetrating, meant not having sex. Clinton would have been stoked.
By the late 19th century spa treatment facilities had introduced ‘water treatments’ to do the job more efficiently. If marriage wasn’t working out, other gynecological techniques were also advised, such as rickety trains, rocking chairs or horse riding.
God, if only Metro Trains sold themselves as anxiety medication…
Back to doctors and female hysteria.
One doctor was quoted as saying that he found the whole treatment process, “time consuming and hard work”(!) and he needed to see more patients during his day, so he invented a rather large and cumbersome, although world first, vibrator.
Vibrator innovation was the driving force behind the creation of the small (not that small, of course), electric motor. In fact, the take-home vibrator was the fifth electrical appliance to be introduced into domestic life, after the sewing machine but long before the electric iron and the Hoover.
In 1902, the first vibrator to be sold in retail outlets was patented by American company, Hamilton Beach. By 1909 they were advertised everywhere,
Good Housekeeping even ran a “tried and tested” claiming they brought ‘a glow to the face’. Another interesting fact (I’m full of them) is that strewn over the back of many sewing machines were ads for these take-home vibrators.
Then, BAM! The cover was blown when stag reels (old pornography) in the 1920s revealed the vibrator as the sex-toy that it was. There is a photo from one of the more famous stag reels of the time,
The Nun’s Story (not to be confused with the 1959 film with Audrey Hepburn) in the gallery above.
High class society from here on out wanted nothing more to do with vibrators – From the 1950s to the 1970s, the vibrator became what academics like to call a camouflaged technology. Basically, women would receive mail-order catalogues with vibrators disguised as the heads on vacuum cleaners. GENIUS.
They remained hidden and out to the retail space for quite some time after all this.
In 1973, PHD sex-educator Betty Dodson started masturbation groups for women to raise their sexual consciousness and during these groups she introduced the women to the wonders of the Hitachi Magic Wand, which she stated could wake the most “somnambulant clitoris.” Dodson’s book
Sex for One has been translated into eight different languages.
Vibrators came back into the accepted mainstream in the 1990s, thanks not to radical feminists, but to the Reagan administration. With the public health threats of sexually transmitted diseases looming, the Surgeon General C. Everett Koop mailed out a list of safe-sex options to every household in the United States in the late 1980s. Vibrators were on it.
In the past 20 years the vibrator itself and the retail outlets that sell them, have become a lot more geared toward what women want. Toys like ‘The Rabbit’ - popularised by
Sex and the City – aren’t necessarily the epitome of aesthetics or product innovation and have helped make them less taboo. The lack of industry standards within the sex-toy/pleasure object industry is still a problem, however many brands are now, more than ever, taking responsibility for their products by using medical grade materials and offering warranties.
So that’s the history of the vibrator! I hope it put things in perspective and makes you feel a little less embarrassed about the box under your bed. At
Mia Muse we try to celebrate female sexuality so that we can all feel empowered with who we are and what we bring to the bedroom, the kitchen table, the study, the couch, the hall-way, the car bonnet, etc.
In our retail space, we provide lifestyle products, including soy and beeswax candles, wax vases and of course, high-end pleasure objects that have been selected for their design and high quality.
*It’s also handy to know that the word hysteria is derived from the Greek word for womb, hysteros. Hippocrates believed that the womb was fixed in the female body, but instead wandered around looking for trouble, and at the moment of orgasm, it would latch itself to the windpipe causing the breathless panting. I hope we’re all familiar with. Hippocrates believed that ailments in the female body were caused by blockage of the womb, concluding that most problems such as lack of appetite, insomnia were a form of hysteria. One Greek physician claimed it was caused by sexual deprivation, particularly in passionate women, and was noted in nuns, virgins, widows and occasionally in married women whose husbands were not up to the job. BOUNCE.
Written by Mia Muse with sources including Slate and The Sunday Times