The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology)  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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The Technology of Orgasm (1998) is a book by Rachel P. Maines on the history of female sexuality as seen through the problem of the female orgasm and female masturbation.

From the publisher:

From the time of Hippocrates until the 1920s, massaging female patients to orgasm was a staple of medical practice among Western physicians in the treatment of "hysteria," an ailment once considered both common and chronic in women. Doctors loathed this time-consuming procedure and for centuries relied on midwives. Later, they substituted the efficiency of mechanical devices, including the electric vibrator, invented in the 1880s. In The Technology of Orgasm, Rachel Maines offers readers a stimulating, surprising, and often humorous account of hysteria and its treatment throughout the ages, focusing on the development, use, and fall into disrepute of the vibrator as a legitimate medical device.

Illustrations

French pelvic douche[1] of about 1860 is used to cure "furor uterinus".

The illustration comes via Fleury, reproduced from Siegfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948).