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Although women today use vibrators for sexual pleasure, the Victorians invented them for a very different reason, writes Jen Newby.

“I screamed merrily – so says Mama. For my own part I do not remember much about it. I felt finely for two hours after bathing and was so much pleased with the bath,” wrote a young American woman, Abigail May, in her journal in 1850.

Abigail had just tried the special douche hoses at Ballston Springs, near New York. The hoses, which propelled jets of water into women’s groins from a distance of ten feet, were considered the ideal treatment for hysteria.

Victorian doctors thought that over a quarter of all women suffered from hysteria or ‘womb disease.’

Faintness, nerves, insomnia, bloating, breathlessness, loss of appetite, frigidity and a mysterious ‘tendency to cause trouble’ were all symptoms of hysteria. The theory had barely moved on from Egyptian healers who believed that lack of female ejaculation during sex made poisonous fluid build up in the womb and spread through the body.

Hysterics were treated with bed rest, bland food, seclusion – or pelvic massage.

Pelvic massage involved, in the words of one doctor, “stimulating the anterior wall of the vagina,” – in other words masturbating – the patient until she experienced ‘hysterical paroxysm’ (clitoral orgasm). Victorian doctors grew rich from treating hysteria as patients needed hands-on treatment for years and there was no risk of death by orgasm.

But some doctors found mastering the technique of pelvic massage difficult or even disgusting. “Many doctors have difficulty treating patients with their own fingers. Special applicators (motor driven) give practical value and convenience to what otherwise is impractical,” wrote Dr Samuel Monell in 1903.

While doctors found pelvic massage distasteful they didn’t consider it a sexual treatment. Sex, for women, was penetration topped off by the male orgasm.

To spare physicians’ aching hands after provoking all those ‘paroxysms’, new devices designed for pelvic massage were soon on the market. Although dildos had been around for centuries, these new inventions meant that the doctor did not have to delve into the patient’s frilly undergarments.

By 1870 a clockwork-driven massager was on sale and hydrotherapy devices were available at spas, like those enjoyed by Abigail May. Eager to escape from patients demanding their daily paroxysm, doctors experimented with shaking machines, swings, train rides and electrotherapy.

By the end of the nineteenth century, more than 50 different kinds of massagers had been invented. Some produced musical vibration, while others gave out ultra-violet rays.

The introduction of electricity to ordinary homes meant that the vibrator quickly became many housewives’ favourite home appliance.

Shaped like a modern hair-dryer with a covered nozzle and about the same size, the electric vibrator – or ‘massager’ as it was disguised – it was on sale a decade before the vacuum cleaner or the iron. “It can be applied more rapidly, uniformly and deeply than by hand and for as long a period as may be desired,” persuaded one innocent-sounding advert in a 1906 copy of Woman’s Home.

Although these adverts concealed their erotic appliances as tame treatments for bad backs, vibrating machines were applied to the crotch rather than the spine.

Over a dozen American manufacturers were producing them by the 1920s. But during the 1930s the tool disappeared. As vibrators began to appear in twenties porn films, their sexual purpose became a little too obvious.

In one film, The Widow’s Delight, a woman chastely allows her date a peck on the cheek, before slamming the door in his face, rushing into her bedroom, and whipping out her vibrator.

So next time you visit Ann Summers, remember a new vibrator might be just what the doctor ordered…

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