LILITH the Mother of Demons - The origin of Demons (The Disobedient Wife)

The birth of demons have many origins, one of these origins is in the myth of Lilith the Mother of all Demons, she also is the first symbol of female rebellion.

It is the Genesis description of the creation of man, to which we look, their two conflicting accounts. One in which both man and woman seem to be formed, on the same day, in the same manner, from the same material. While in the second account woman is created from the rib of man while he sleeps and is then presented to man, Adam, upon his awakening.

It is this second account with which we are more familiar, for most of us Eve has always been the wife of Adam the mother of all humanity, derived from the Latin Eva, derived from the Hebrew Chavah/Hava – to breathe, and chayah, to live, or give life. The traditional meaning of Eve is living. But if we look at the Hebrew original she is the embodiment of her name as she is the giver of life.

But why these conflicting accounts of the birth of the first man and woman which clearly seem to indicate that man and women where formed together as well as being formed separately. In an attempt to make sense, and reconcile, these conflicting accounts the Midrash was born. These writings reached their peak in the 2^nd century C.E, also influencing late Christian interpretations of the Bible.

Lilith

It was in these writings which the first woman, in the first account, was said to be Adam’s first wife, Lilith, which means; of the night/ storm goddess, the exact opposite of Eve’s light. She was supposed to have been created simultaneously, with Adam from the same substance. Whereas Eve was created from a portion of Adam; thereby making them two very different women.

Essentially what it comes down to, is that Adam was formed from dust or sand or clay (choose your poison) and right beside him also formed from the same material was this first woman, then God breathed life or “soul” into them both.

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Genesis 1:27

              

As opposed to God creating Adam in his image and then thinking since all the other creatures had mates why not give him someone to keep him company.

“So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon man and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed the flesh at that place. The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which he had taken from the man and brought her to the man.” Genesis 2:21-22

This version simply states that Eve was formed from a “rib”, essentially something that was a part of Adam thereby binding her to Adam, she cannot be viewed as a separate entity.

Eve

These verses when read this way do seem to clearly denote the creation of two different women. Of course the argument could be put forward that this would mean that there were two Adams as well and possibly a whole other earth if we consider a  double creation idea. Part of that hypotheses wouldn’t be entirely wrong, there was possibly a First Adam as well but not a second earth (but that is an entirely different blog I’ll be getting into in future), for the story of Lilith we’ll stick to the first idea that there was only one Adam, working on the premises which is presented by the text that indicated that portions were only a repeat and others were a record of a change of how events occurred a second time around. Such as the animals being created in the same way, each separately, Adam is also created the same way, the only part that is different is when the women are created and the way the women are created. It would truly seem to be an almost re-writing of events with a correction of an incorrectly recorded event but then why was the first simply just not deleted if incorrectly recorded. So perhaps the first event was not incorrect and the section that appeared different while everything else is the same would could possibly then prove that it was only that part of the event that had to be re-done or done again.

Something else that is interesting to note is that Adam, is derived from the Hebrew adam meaning “to be red” referring to the ruddy colour of human skin, or from the Akkadian adamu meaning “to make”. There is a play on words adamah “earth”, so Adam seems to mean the colour of the earth or clay from which Adam was created or simply “made from earth”. Yet the names of the two women who were his wives have names with very distinctive meaning, that have assigned them their roles perfectly, Adam does not seem to have this.

Winged Lilith

According to Midrash literature a dispute arose between Adam and Lilith: Adam tried to assert his dominance over her by insisting that she lie beneath him during sex, it could be possible that Adam was taking his cue from watching the animals, noting that the male is always on top, behind the female holding her in a submissive position, but Lilith refused. Feeling that since they were equal because of their creation, therefore she should not have to be beneath him. From the text it would seem that she might have submitted initially and then decided that she didn’t have to and they should take turns being in the dominate position. Adam would not allow it, were by Lilith is said to have loosed her hair, pronounced the Ineffable Name of God, sprouted wings and few off into the air.

The Midrash texts seem to indicate that Adam insisted on his male rights as he saw Lilith as only fit to be below him. When she left he appealed to God to make her return, God then sent three of his angels in search of her. Senoy, Sensonoy & Semangelof to bring her back, saying that if she returned all that was made would be good but if she did not, she must permit one hundred of her children to die every day.

A lot that I’ve read about Lilith over the years has said that the angels found her beside the Red Sea but after researching the original text, The Alphabet of Ben Sira, it turns out that Lilith was found in the midst, the middle, the center, of the Red Sea. Not beside it. The angels threaten to drown her if she does not return, she refuses them, they tell her what her fate and the fate of her children will be. Lilith agrees to the conditions but as retribution for the sentence she vows that her new role will be, to become the killer of women in child-birth, and children; baby boys until up until eight days and girls for 12 days. Her only show of mercy was to agree that should an amulet be engraved with the angel’s names she would then consider the child protected and not harm them.

Amulet of protection

So it became part of Jewish tradition; the angel’s names were inscribed on parchment or carved on the bed post or on a tablet where a baby slept to protect them from Lilith.

The three angles were the angles of medicine, it has been postulated that in their original Hebrew appearance that they were related to angels that we know by other names:

• Senoy/ Snvi – Michael – leader of the heavenly host (archangel).
• Sensenoy/ Snsvi – Gabriel – who always appears as the messenger of God (archangel because only they appeared in God’s presence).
• Semangelof/Smnglof – Uriel – the angel of truth or wisdom (archangel)

Michael and Gabriel are the angels most often mentioned in the bible as doing God’s bidding and traditionally;

• They are guardians of three of the Watchtowers:
• Michael to the South is Fire
• Gabriel in the West is Water
• And Uriel to the North is Earth

And as far as symbols go earth is a symbol of wisdom and knowledge (symbolised by the Torch that Uriel is usually depicted carrying), Water is the representation of psychic ability or foresight (which Gabriel is a representative of, as he always brings news of the future) and finally Fire is a sign of purification being both a creative and destructive power (which Michael represents as being the leader of the heavenly host and is supposed to lead God’s army in Revelations).

So if the assumption is true that these names are related to these three angels then Lilith was very important if they were sent to retrieve her. An angel of knowledge, and angel of foresight and a warrior.

Needless to say that Lilith was a very brave and strong woman because even given these threats she would not return to Adam rather choosing the seemingly horrifying fate, than to submit to her mate.

Lilith takes Samael as her mate

Lilith is supposed to have taken up residence on the banks of the Red Sea in a cave where, it is the general idea, she began to mate with hosts of demons and begot demon children by the thousands a day, when in fact she took Samael as her mate.

But Samael was not a demon, he in fact was an angel. The Zohar defines Samael as meaning “the poison of God”, the Kabbalah defines him as the “Severity of God”, and he is also the consort of Naamah and works as the left hand of God. He is the being who has been strongly identified with Satan. Yet the identity of Satan, the personality does not seem to fit what we have previously learned about this being. But it would appear that was of the original host which departed from God's side.

(Samael the Archangel, the destroyer, the accuser, the hater of man, the Angel of Death.)

So it was when Lilith did not return that God then created Eve from Adam's rib. It has been suggested that this was done in order that Eve would be more compliant to Adam as she was a part of him, of him, one cannot after all go against a part of yourself.

There is the idea that because Man and Woman were created at the same time as an androgynous being with a front-face and back-face and that is how they were made at the same time and equal before God split them. (This is very much like the Greek myth of the creation of man). They were created in this way as the image of God is both masculine and feminine. The word Elohim is a masculine noun but Hebrew fundamentally has both masculine and feminine gender phonetic vowel pronunciation for much of its words, besides the words tense, singularity or plurality that affect each word pronunciation. Eloh etc are used in the overall biblical texts as a generic title not as names. However there is evidence that the Yahwdim people and Gentiles use it as both masculine and feminine gender names by component or a whole person’s name and im is the masculine plural. So in this case Eloh could be the feminine form with im serving as the masculine plural. And if we look at how it is referred to in Genesis 1 with the creation of man and elohim being used as reference to a goddess (Ki 11:5) seeing the title Elohim as both male and female is then not a stretch at all.

The most important information about Lilith we find in the Zohar. The Zohar is essentially a Kabalistic Midrash on the Torah. It consists of twenty-two volumes penned around 1200 C.E in Spain by Moses de Leon. Lilith’s role in the Zohar and thus in Kabbalah is large.  She is mentioned by name in twenty-seven separate passages and by direct reference in a further twenty-nine , for a total of 56 direct references.

Here Lilith is the other half of Samael, she being the body and he the soul. Also here there is reference that Lilith was created first and then Adam (or as one being with two faces with the Lilith countenance being first) and before God could breathe life into Adam a thousand spirits or, what also translated as, a mist rose, tried to enter the body but God rebuked it and they could not enter the image of Adam it then entered into the Lilith image and animated her (this would be the reason for the split between the androgynous being). The mist being the defective light of Samael.

Something else that the Zohar mentioned is that the serpent in the Garden of Eden was actually Lilith; I have touched on the idea according to rabbinical sources that Eve was tricked by the demon Samael in The Fall of Satan, but she was tricked in a sexual way. This idea stemmed from the sexual connotation of the representation of the serpent form, as well as reasoning why Abel seemed to be the image of Adam, the image of God and more favoured as opposed to his brother Cain, whose description differs entirely. Then of course we noted that Samael rode the serpent into the Garden. He did not possess it. Secondly it has already been established that Lilith had knowledge that Adam did not seem to, as she pronounced the secrete name of God which gave her the ability to sprout wings and fly away to escape Adam. So is it possible that she was also able to take other forms due to this knowledge. The reason for the serpents eagerness to aid Samael is never explained but Zohar 1:148-148b (Vayetze: Passage 23) does give us a reason for this, that if Lilith was the serpent, they, Lilith and Samael, are one as Adam and Eve are one, made from the same. Which would support the idea of the life breathed into Lilith and why she was not a match for Adam. Furthermore it would explain God’s anger directly aimed at the serpent. Making the prophetic statement that the seed of the serpent would strike at the heel of Eve’s seed and the seed of Eve would crush the serpent’s offspring under foot.

The symbol of the serpent has always historically been a representation of fertility, a creative life force. As snakes shed their skin through sloughing, they are symbols of rebirth, transformation, immortality, and healing. In fact most older religions believe the image or symbol that is the serpent as positive for the most part and always plays an important role, even in mythology. It has been seen as the protector, the symbol of possessing the secrets of the material world and of royalty, the symbol of the possessing the third eye from which nothing can be hidden; in this world or the next, it has meant strength, the symbol of eternity, the double entwined snakes symbolises the balance of power (yin/yang). It only seems to be with the advent of monotheistic religions that the serpent became something associated with evil, such as, lying (due to the forked tongue), or being sexual, witchcraft, the attainment of forbidden knowledge and of course of Satan.

So the if we look at the symbol of the serpent in relation to old symbolic beliefs, it could have been Lilith as she was immortal, she held knowledge, she held the ability to transform herself not just physically and capable of regeneration/renewal, she was strong willed and cunning. In essences the embodiment of the serpent. She also came too be associated with witchcraft.

What then, rounds out the theory of the existence of Lilith is if we look at the verses in Genesis 1:26-30 as well as Genesis 2 6-9 and 15-25 again.

When man and woman are first created nothing is said about a garden, God simply decides to create man

“...in Our image, according to Our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth”

And proceeds to tell them that they may eat of every plant and from anything that yields seeds. If we look at this, man and woman, have been given dominion over the entire earth so even if we discount the theory of something else giving Lilith life the fact that the same essence that was breathed into Adam would have been breathed into her if they were initially an androgynous being. Which would have made them equals none-the-less as they carried the same consciousness. So was also therefore afforded the same right and power as Adam with no limitations. (This would then of course account for Lilith’s rebellion as she in every aspect was the same as Adam.)

Lilith and Eve

But in Genesis 2 we are then told how God creates a single being, just one, suddenly the female has been removed from the equation, maybe we are now being told in a manner that man was already created in the divine image and animated. This time around nothing is mentioned about God giving dominion over the earth because he has already done that, instead we are informed that God now decided to plant a Garden and in this Garden he places man.

In a protected place, separate from the earth he was supposed to have already created?

We also get a different story about the food source for this man; God caused every plant to grow that was pleasing to the sight and good for food to grow here and put man there to cultivate it and keep it.

Why go to the effort of creating a world and then a separate place and more animals only to populate the separate place with these animals?

And why if the entire earth had already been populated with animals and food would you repeat the process?

The answer would be that, it had been done but Adam could no longer reside on the earth in safety. It is an iteration of man, Adam, being placed in a place of safety (for his own good, to be kept away from bad influences), because this Garden was clearly separated from everything else as it is described in the in-between verses how it was cordoned off, and there is only one tree that Adam is no not allowed to eat from. Once again animals are formed and placed specifically in the garden with Adam, whom he names as they are brought to him to see if he can find a match among them. Eve does not exist at all yet. And it is only after Adam cannot find a match among the animals that Eve is created from his rib. The literal Hebrew verse reads:

“became alone” and not “be alone”

Which would then imply that he was not always alone as opposed to what we believe today.

So the question still remains, why are certain things repeated and other not?

I see it in the following way:

I have already stated why the idea for a first wife is possible even if we disregard the idea of her name or why she fled. Genesis 2 is clearly an iteration of certain happenings in Genesis 1 yet everything is not repeated, some scholars have said that Genesis 1 is an overview of the creation story and Genesis 2 is a details description but this theory fails for me because then everything from Gen 1 should be repeated with additional information and this does not happen. So for me that theory can be scratched, many clergy simply maintain that the devote should not question and just accept and that the bible is God given to man, word for word and that the first is a mistake, it is not important. Yet this is not true for everyone, devote rabbinical sources have sought to explain it, and it does seem possible that one attempt was made and for whatever reason the female version did not work. But she was simply not removed from the earth so the explanation of her turning “evil” would account for why God suddenly planted a Garden, effectively making it a “protected gated community” making sure the one remaining perfect creation was safe.

But safe from what?

Well if Adam had already had sex with Lilith before she refused it would stand to reason that he would want to continue with this, especially since they had been told to be fruitful, in other words: have children, and this was no longer happening, so he would have that urge. In Gen 2 this phrase is never repeated “be fruitful is never repeated”. Why? Well because Adam was already blessed in that way so God wouldn’t need to do it a second time. And as for the creation of more animals in the Eden, well Lilith had been given equal rights of dominion over them as Adam, so it is possible that the animals in Eden might have been free from her influence, as she had been given dominion over the animals of the earth and Adam were separate entities and the Garden was also a separate place. It has been suggested that Adam mated with the animals in Eden, that is how he knew they were not his equals. This would enforce the idea that Adam had carnal desires and required a mate; therefore Eve was created for this purpose. And even if we do not accept this idea the fact remains that he would not have been able to be fruitful without a mate, so Eve had to come into being.

Adam could no longer eat from any tree in the Garden, it was the one command that he received, if he ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil which would effectively make him mortal, stripping him of the essence of God that made him immortal. If we look at the words used “in Our image”, “in Our likeness”, these words are interchangeable as they essentially mean the same thing but what if what is being referred to is not only physical aspect but the essence of what made God eternal as well. Meaning Adam would have been physically perfect which is what would have made him immortal as would Lilith. That is why possibly “eating” from the tree would cause the physical aspect to lose that perfection causing it to begin to wither away. That would explain why Lilith would remain immortal and physically perfect because she was never bared from “eating” of the tree only Adam and as a result Eve as she was of Adam in essence. (Also the blessing of to be fruitful in Gen 1 would apply to Lilith as well, which would account for her hordes of offspring.)

Also another verse Gen 2:23 reads:

“And man said, “This time, it is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called ishah (woman) because this one was taken from ish (man).

The wording of is very odd, this time and this one could implying Adam.s search through the animals for his mate, but it could also be seen as more than just the animals God created from dust, as well, but then again Lilith would also have been created from dust, where as Eve was taken as part of Adam.

Now to round out the theory of Lilith as the serpent in the Garden, since Adam and Eve where immortal, and she had promised to “take possession” of the children of man how could she do this if they were immortal and protected then it would mean that she would somehow have to reverse the protection. It would be fairly simple if we could just end it there but there is as usual much more to the story. It serves to fully explain the Evil that Lilith was endowed with and would serve to explain why women were seen as powerful entities, even though, they were forced to believe they were not.

Kabbalists expounded on the joining of Lilith and Samael.

That, Lilith, seeing that she was had been replaced wanted to return but has been locked out of the Garden. Thus, out of jealously (and possibly revenge) she joined with Samael in his seduction of Eve and if we go with the revenge theory this idea works even better.

Interpretations often result in misunderstanding caused by translations. In latin malum  as an adjective means “evil”, but as a noun means “apple”. In Europe, interpreters reading the story in Latin and understanding the forbidden fruit as the source of evil naturally concluded that it must have been an apple (that is where we get the idea of an apple from and why it appears in paintings). So what if what was meant is that God viewed certain types of knowledge as evil and that he was warning Adam not to partake of it, as remember the warning was given specifically to Adam not to Eve, who would have been informed by Adam that this was forbidden.

So the story goes that Lilith joined Samael in his seduction of Eve which was a sexual seduction and possibly also provided her with the knowledge that Lilith and Samael were in possession of, thus Eve’s menstrual blood became the actual “filth and the impure seed” of Samael. In turn Eve having gained “knowledge” seduced Adam during her menses; the act of sexual intercourse during a woman menses is forbid in the Bibel, Torah and Qu'ran, the Bible of course simply states that man should not let menstrual blood touch him, but does not say why. Here the Kabbalah provides that reason; Once Adam defiled himself with this act, being that Eve’s menses was unclean, Lilith became strong “in

Lilith as the Night Demon

her husks”, in her form, and was able to come to him against his will to steal his seed to engender many demons, spirits and Lilin. This could allude to a passage in the Zohar that says that Lilith was imprisoned beneath the (Red) Sea, obviously it did not mean her in her full form but part of her power was imprisoned and when Eve seduced him, with what (knowledge/power) she had gained from Lilith, she somehow weakened him enough for Lilith to have power over him.

Here the power of blood is very important to note, the Kabbalists, are describing the power thought to be in blood, here, menstrual blood specifically, and the link between it and Kundalini energy which takes a serpentine form. This, the primal energy which is located at the base of the spine, is described as lying “coiled” at the base of the spine (like a snake), represented as either a goddess or sleeping serpent. This is spiritual enlightenment, “mother energy or intelligence of complete maturation”. It rises through the body, “uncoiling”, like a serpent, through the chakras to reach the Sahasrara Chakra at the top of the head, the image is of a blooming lotus flower (the flower as also been a sign of virginal purity).

This means the revelation of the Divine Splendour and attainment of Supreme Consciousness, or more plainly, Self-Realization (the awareness of Heaven and Earth) is reached. Now we take into account that the serpentine form represented knowing and power, which Self-Realization would give to one.

(Through her interaction with Lilith and Samael, Eve attained enlightenment)

The belief is carried further, because Eve was able to seduce Adam, bend him to her will, it shows the authority Eve was able to exert over Adam, proving the power and belief in her blood, women’s immense potency to compel man to act against his will. Suddenly Eve had also become rebellious and strong. Therefore, it might be said that persuasive gift was given by Lilith to Eve during her seduction and as well through her connection with Samael via the blood.

This ability and awakening of woman was of course called a curse on mankind, and in addition to this Eve would produce an heir for Samael, Cain.

So from then on Lilith was free to wreck havoc on the descendants of Adam and Eve except for those protected by amulets and she and her daughters became the succubus who would visit men in their sleep and through sexual dreams steal their seed.

And the daughters of Eve became cursed by the church as weak and open to evil and seductresses of men. A nature we are told we must be guarded against. Part of that curse was the pain of child birth as well as to endure menstruation once a month, according to the church.

The name for Lilith comes from the Sumarian word “lilitu”, which meant a wind spirit or a female demon. Lilith is mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh, a famous poem of ancient Mesopotamia dated back to not later than C. 2100 B.C.E. the table was added to the original text much later, c. 600 B.C.E, in its later Assyrian and Akkadian translations.

She appears, as the dark maid (or demon), in the centre of a tree being tended by the goddess Inanna. In the Babylonian Talmud, she appears as a dark spirit with an uncontrollable and dangerous sexuality stealing the seed of sleeping men to produce hordes of demons.

We find Lilith in the Sumero-Babylonian Goddess Belit-ili or Belili, Goddess of the Moon, love, the underworld, trees, wells and springs. To the Canaanites she was Baalat, the “Divine Lady”, on a tabled from Ur, ca. 2000 B.C.E, she was addressed as Lillake,the Goddess of desolation, the embodiment of loneliness, emptiness and the wildness of nature.

It is from the Sumarian lilitu which the name for Lilith was attained, before this there was simply the first Eve and the second Eve.

The view of the seed of two women, at odds with one another, gives the bible a very different flavour which speaks more to the power within the female, it suddenly is no longer, the battle being waged between good and evil, God through Adam and his male line against the devil. It now seems to be, on the surface, the battle between light, Eve, against the darkness, Lilith.

And if we were to examine the Biblical creation story more closely with all these new views from the Kabbalah, the Zohar and from the many Goddesses and spirits that lend their identity to the first Eve, Lilith. We may begin to see something with a deeper meaning, something more than a disobedient woman who was punished for her rebellion, as we seem to have supposed to be seeing. The story was designed to show women that least submission to husband is given one is destined only to fall. Instead Lilith embraced her fate, rising above it, reborn as something more and if we look at her original image in the Goddess form we see her standing alone as an even stronger image. Neither can Eve be viewed in the same light anymore, she is no longer weak and easily lead, Eve makes a choice choosing to know, instead of remaining in ignorant bliss. The story is a way of explain to women that, husband and father know better and if one were to go against that, then one, woman, would bring great shame and trials not only on herself but on her family as well, yet Eve chooses to want more, and in that wanting gains great knowledge.

The ultimate goal in teaching that women where either weak and easily influenced or destined to destroy themselves if not guided by man was to destroy the Goddess religion, the Aspect of the Great Mother who exerts power, the very seat of feminine strength, ability and power.

And they very nearly succeeded, if not for the knowledge and intuition that it seems Lilith passed on to Eve.

Does Lilith deserve the title Mother of Demons, yes she does, she was the first women to choose her own mate, and together they spawned powerful offspring. She was also powerful enough to reach forward in time and through mythology to disrupt the plans of men. 

HYSTERICAL WOMAN - Guilty pleasures

We, men and women alike, understand Hysteria to mean a state of emotional chaos, often characterised by having trouble perceiving reality. People may become violent or super strong when they are in this state. Usually it’s brought on by a horrible event, natural disasters, horrifying accidents or deep emotional lose – or if you’re a thirteen year old girl at the concert of your favourite boy band and have front row seats – hysteria or being classified as hysterical is the opposite of calmness. It is not considered a debilitating mental disease...

Hysteria, used to mean something very different, especially for women, it was a curse that was a solely a female affliction.

The 1800’s was a very different time, this was the Victorian era and everything was in some aspects horrifyingly different. We look to Great Britain for example, the medical profession was disorganised and uncontrolled, its practitioners where mostly part-time, combining their work with a wide range of other activities; you could have your hair cut and a tooth extracted or maybe even get some surgery done. The present day red and white barber pole in historical times was a representation of bloody bandages wrapped around a pole.

As late as 1856, of the 10 220 persons listed in the Medical Directory with some sort of qualification only four percent had a medical degree from an English university. Fifteen years earlier, the 1841 Census had listed 33 339 people practicing one or more branches of medicine. That’s a lot of people essentially butchering a lot of other people in need.

Medicine in the 1800’s was something to incite fear, especially for those us who live in the modern era, where something as simple as hand washing is taught to us the minute we are able to walk. Medicine preparations of mercury, arsenic, iron and phosphorous where popular, doctors might recommend a “change of air” along with vomiting, laxatives and another old favourite bleeding/bloodletting or leeching.

The Industrial Revolution had begun, urbanization was taking place and death rates where high, worse in cities than in the countryside. Smallpox, typhus and tuberculosis where endemic, and cholera alarming epidemic. Overcrowding combined with poor sanitation and often grinding poverty left a large part of the population vulnerable to the latest outbreak of whatever was nastiest.

In 1854 John Snow discovered that cholera was a water-borne disease and he provided conclusive proof by mapping cases in Soho, central London, from a single contaminated well. He also analyzed cholera’s incidence in water that was bought from different suppliers that were drawing water from the Thames downstream, after many sewers had flowed into it, the death rate was 14 times higher than those buying from companies that drew their water upstream. Following on this research he recommended boiling water before use. Now we need to keep in mind that right up until 2014 the Thames was still considered highly polluted even after an improved sewerage treatment system implemented (only) since the 1960’s.

It was only in the late 1850’s that germ theory came into being. Louis Pasteur’s work that proved that the souring of milk was caused by living organisms and by verifying this changed pathology and surgery. His work lead to the introduction of antiseptic procedures in surgery via Joseph Lister. Sadly germ theory still was not the prominent idea behind diseases, the dominant theory at the time being that diseases were caused by exposure to poisonous gases or vapour, “Miasma”. Simply put, if one did not breathe infected air, air in which were suspended particles of decaying matter that was characterized by its foul smell, you were safe. The disease malaria is an example of this belief, so named from the Italian mala ‘bad’ and aria ‘air’.

Bird mask worn during the plague of 1656, by doctors. which they believed to be airborne. the beak was packed with sweet smelling  flowers herbs and spices.

As mentioned before, hand washing, something that is common place today was highly unusual. Many women died during childbirth from puerperal sepsis or childbed fever. Which resulted from the transfer of infection from the lack of plumbing and hygiene in hospitals or from doctors and their assistants not washing hands or tools used in the birthing process. We largely have Philipp Semmelweis to thank for the hand washing process and sterilization of medical tools today, of course this caused an uproar in the medical profession at the time as doctors refused to believe that they were the cause of so many deaths. Semmelweis was to afraid to publish his research because of the ridicule he received, it was only thanks to his students that he eventually began to give lectures and demonstrations.

Sadly there were other problems that faced the medical profession and caused just as much tragedy during the 1800’s. We are well aware that women were mere property and where not considered in anyway the equals of men but what we don’t realise is the extent to which these ideas stretched.

It is well documented and widely publicized that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was racist but what is less well known is that Darwin also taught that women are biologically inferior to men. Darwin’s views on women had a major impact on society. In a telling attitude about his ideas concerning women, just before his marriage to his cousin, it is noted that he listed the advantages of marrying. Among these apparent advantages, he had compiled a list of pro’s and con’s for a man (himself) to marry, according to the father of evolution, that for the very least he would have someone who would show interest in him. He also reasoned that he would be a

“poor slave....worse than a Negro”

Darwin reasoned that adult females of most species resembled the young of both sexes and this and other evidence caused him to reach the reasoning that males are more evolutionarily advanced than females. He likened the female brain to being closer to that of animals. He was not the only anthropologist to reason in this way, his contemporaries not only compared the female brain to the lowered developed brain of an animal but noted that it had overdeveloped sense organs which were a detriment to the brain. Carl Vogt, a natural history professor, argued that the female child and the senile white all had the intellect and nature of the “grown-up Negro”.

Another 19^th century biologist argued that women’s inferiority was because Darwin believed unchecked female militancy threatened to produce a perturbation of the races and to divert the orderly process of evolution. The accusation was thus leveled against the female species; were women allowed a choice in their own lives then it would cause a decline or deviation in the evolution of man. Others such as Gustave Le Bone wrote that women represented the most inferior forms of human evolution and that they were closer to children and savages than to an adult, civilized man. Although he did admit that there might be women of intelligence that were above that of the average man he concluded that they were as exceptional as the birth of a monstrosity, such as a gorilla with two heads. So it was not necessary to take them into account.

Thanks to Darwin’s finding on women as well as other men of science, women were proven to be irrefutably inferior to men, not just physically but in mental capacity as well. Therefore it was deemed that all women needed guidance in all matters. An idea developed in society from these thoughts, called Separate Spheres, which stated that men and women should function in two separate worlds: one world that was public and the other that was private. People believed that these spheres where biologically based, determined by sexual gender.

Basically what happened was that the husband was required to be in public sphere creating the wealth, a true man was aggressive, competitive, and rational and channeled all his time and energy into his work (and climbing the social ladder), he was also outspoken and well educated in all matters and at home his word was law. He controlled everything and was to be revered by his wife and children for being a man and providing. Whereas the true woman was the complete opposite, the ideology of the “Cult of True Womanhood” surfaced. This defined ideal women as being:

·         Pious

·         Chaste

·         Domestic

·         and Subservient (to her parents and husband)

The role of the man given here was then of the middle class, who were businessmen, bankers, lawyers etc. Men of higher standing came from titled-money and from marrying well. These men did not work but were free to indulge in other pursuits.

Thus there was of course the idea of an upper class woman, the well bred lady.

Although for women during this period their entire focus, as taught from birth, was to make a good marriage, even more so for the upper class or your aristocratic lady, as a woman had no other means to support herself. Yet she must never make it to obvious or seem eager in anyway.

A woman’s education centered almost entirely on this. Up until as old as ten or as young as seven these young women were educated by a governess in their homes (or by waiting gentlewomen), these governesses were often every well educated and therefore considered unfeminine (and unmarriageable), later they might then be sent to a school for girls usually as finishing school. A girl’s education often included basic reading, and writing as well as feminine activities such as needlework, painting and dancing. Girls might also read Shakespearean plays and poetry. Also of great importance, proper etiquette, or good manners, was taught and enforced at all times in the education of young ladies. It referred to the socially acceptable way in which a person conducted himself or herself in public. The rules for young women was usually more tight laces than the strings of their corsets.

For example:

·         Young ladies where never unaccompanied after twilight, in truth young women of marriageable age were never unaccompanied as this could result in, if not apparent scandalous behaviour, the rumours of possible scandalous behaviour and these were even worse (and appearing in public unescorted was scandalous behaviour in itself). For a young woman to simply be seen on her own in any public setting could lead to her character and moral upbringing being called into question and lead to her not making an advantages marriage and falling into disgrace.

·         A lady walks at a modest and measured gait, anything else would injure the graces which characterizes her. She could not turn her head to either side in public; this bad habit would seem an invitation to the impertinent.

·       If a young lady was walking in public and for some reason was required to raise her dress to avoid it becoming soiled or to climb a step she would be required to raise it with her right hand to one side gathering the folds of her gown only slightly above her ankles. Anything more would be considered indecent and scandalous.

·       If at a social setting, such as a ball or luncheon, women, especially unmarried young ladies did not leave the public area, such as the ballroom, without an escort which was usually a family member, or a matron who had been put in charge of chaperoning her. Women were also never without a chaperon in the company of a man who was not related to her in anyway, a young woman of good breading did not so much speak to a gentleman without a chaperon presents. Neither did she speak to a gentleman unless spoken to first.

·      Invitations to be called upon where not presented to her, but to her father or a male relative who would then approve or not of the the visit.

·    Women also did not call out or raise their voices in public.

·       A lady or a gentleman did not refer to one another or anyone else to whom they were acquainted by their Christian names, not in public, unless among relations or intimate friends, in any other manner but as Mrs, Mr, or Miss Jones etc.

Girls were taught the correct way to walk, dance, the art of having a good conversation (women should never dominate a conversation when conversing with her suitor) and of course how to correctly entertain. It was deemed very important for a young woman to be able to do these things as women were judged on their ability to be graceful and men married according to beauty and money, most did not require their future wife to think for herself, therefore women were encouraged to defer or appear to defer to their husbands in the majority of matters. A woman of independent means or nature was unacceptable and undesirable.

Women who were in the entertainment industry, actresses and singers, were therefore considered to have fallen from grace and were of a lower social standing, they were fallen women. The term “fallen” did not simply mean that a woman had lost her sexual innocence, either through her own choice or by force, or that a married woman had had an affair, a woman could be considered fallen simply because she was well educated; like a man, eccentric or elusive. Any woman that deviated from what was socially expected of women could risk being considered “fallen from grace”. In a way it comes from the idea of scholars at the time of Eve having fallen from the grace of god (thereby also leading Adam into sin), she reached for something that was not to be hers, knowing what God knew, she had a desire that she was not supposed to have, that was not her place to want. Knowledge and independence was a man’s right not a woman’s place to want.

It was due this view and many others that men felt women had to keep themselves innocent and childlike. There was knowledge and ideas that women were not supposed to have, knowing  anything about sex or the sexual act being one of them. Being to ‘forward’, for example, in the company of men suggested a “worrying sexual appetite”. Women where assumed to desire marriage as it allowed them to become mothers rather than having sexual or emotional satisfaction, when one should not want anything else above marriage and family. A woman who had any other desire was unthinkable. Women not only had to be virgins in a physical sense but had to remain innocent and free from any thought of love or sexuality until AFTER they received a proposal. This requirement of chastity and absolute purity was not expected of men. The potential husband was free to participate in premarital and extramarital sexual relationships (it was even expected that he would).The groom was typically at least five years older than his bride, which not only enforced the ‘natural’ hierarchy between the sexes but also made financial sense as the man needed to support his wife. Women did not own property, if she had male relatives they held it in trust for her until she married and then it became her husband’s property, it was the same with anything that she inherited after she was married. Not only did a woman not own anything in her own name, neither did she own her own body, it was also considered the property of her husband (marital rape was a common practice as it was not seen as wrong, the husband was entitled to what was his), children also became the property of the man.

Motherhood was always separate and foremost, from anything sexual. Sex for any other reason than creating children was viewed as dirty and scandalous. Purity was an expectation and necessity in order for motherhood to be truly appreciated. Although mothers were considered to be women with some sexual experience they were nonetheless often canonized as essentially virginal. What this essentially meant was that women had to be religious, pious, without sexual passion and gratification (she did not desire sex or physical gratification). Such beliefs were required to correctly bring up children, a woman who did not possess these qualities, who lacked religious faith, could not instill sexual propriety in her daughter and thus was unfit to be a mother.

The wedding day for a new bride was described in two ways, as positive; as she was the center of attention, in a beautiful and inspiring ceremony, symbolizing her triumph in securing a male to provide for all her needs, but the wedding night was the price she had to pay for her success; the terrible and painful experience of sex was its cost.

In an extract from : Instruction and advice for the young bride by Ruth Smythers 1894

 t this point, dear reader, let me concede one shocking truth. Some young women actually anticipate the wedding night ordeal with curiosity and pleasure! Beware such an attitude! A selfish and sensual husband can easily take advantage of such a bride. One cardinal rule of marriage should never be forgotten: GIVE LITTLE, GIVE SELDOM, AND ABOVE ALL, GIVE GRUDGINGLY. Otherwise what could have been a proper marriage could become an orgy of sexual lust.

n the other hand, the bride's terror need not be extreme. While sex is at best revolting and at worse rather painful, it has to be endured, and has been by women since the beginning of time, and is compensated for by the monogamous home and by the children produced through it. It is useless, in most cases, for the bride to prevail upon the groom to forego the sexual initiation. While the ideal husband would be one who would approach his bride only at her request and only for the purpose of begetting offspring, such nobility and unselfishness cannot be expected from the average man.

This advice to women on what occurs in the bedroom and how she was to view the sexual act as well as that a good wife avoided it at all costs enforced the idea that the sexual act for women was a shameful experience.

So the sexes had biologically thusly been classed and separated in every manor:

MEN	WOMEN
Powerful	Weak
Active	Passive
Brave	Timid
Worldly	Domestic
Logical	Illogical
Rational	Emotional, susceptible to madness and hysteria
Individual	Social/Familial
Independent	Dependant
Able to resist temptation	Unable to resist temptation
Tainted	Pure
Sexual/Sensual	Not sexual/sensual
Ambitious	Content
Sphere: Public	Sphere: Private

These traits were polar opposites as men and women were considered the complete opposite of one another. More importantly women who expressed traits or desires contrary to these ideals were ostracized and deemed to have “unsexed” themselves.

Women should not want or have any of the desires or needs as a man; she was not capable of it.

The other frightening reality was that women during this period could be institutionalized in a mental asylum for these reasons as well.

Since it was widely believed that a woman’s place was at home and as subordinate to her husband and that she should be happy doing so, if a woman therefore rebelled against this expectation she could be found insane and committed to an asylum. This was usually done at the request of a husband or father and since women had no legal rights she could not contest or appeal the decision made for her. Victorian physicians considered all women more fragile and sensitive than men therefore they believed that women where more susceptible to nervous breakdowns. The list of reasons to be admitted to an asylum where long, in our time they seem ridiculous, and horrifying.

If we look closely at the list above, quite a few of the listed items makes absolutely no sense for being institutionalized at a mental asylum. Especially for something like menopause, or ill treating your husband and yet there is nothing on there for ill treating ones wife.

Quite often actual reasons by husbands were not necessary, since a wife could be divorced if she where insane, many husbands would institutionalize their wives and then file for divorce. A few months later marriage records could be found of same said husband to a younger (possibly wealthier) bride.

Another, seemingly common, reason for institutionalizing women was Female Hysteria, which is not the same as what we term it today, since we would attribute anyone from either sexes from suffering from it.

Hysteria was undoubtedly the first metal disorder attributed to women. Accurately described in the second millennium B.C.E, until Freud, and considered an exclusively female disease. Over 4000 years of history, this disease was considered from two perspectives: scientific and demonological. It was cured with herbs, sex or sexual abstinence, punished and purified with fire for its association with sorcery and finally, clinically studied as a disease and treated with innovative therapies.

As stated before not only was a woman vulnerable to mental disorders; was weak and easily influenced by the “supernatural” or by organic degeneration, and she was somehow “guilty of sinning or not procreating. Therefore mental disorders, especially in women so often misunderstood and misinterpreted generated scientific and or moral bias, defined as pseudo-scientific prejudice.

It was the ancient Egyptians in the second millennium B.C.E, dated 1900 BCE (Kahun Papyrus) who identified the cause of hysterical disorders in spontaneous uterus movement within the female body. The Eber Papyrus (1600BCE) the oldest medical document containing references to depressive syndromes, traditional symptoms of hysteria were described as tonic-clonic seizures  and the sense of suffocation and imminent death (this was Freud’s globus istericus – the “lump in the throat” feeling one feels ). Here we also find indications of the therapeutic measures to be taken depending on the position of the uterus, which must be forced to return to its natural position. If the uterus had moved upward, to move it down this must be done by placing malodorous and acrid substances near the woman’s mouth and nostrils while scented ones were placed near her vagina and if the uterus had moved downward the opposite was done. So what this basically came down to was chasing the uterus in the opposite direction of the bad smell while attracting it with something better smelling, well that is the conclusion I came to...

Then according to Greek mythology, the experience of hysteria was the base of the birth of psychiatry. The Argonaut Melampus, a physician, is considered its founder: he placated the revolt of Argo’s virgins who refused to honour the phallus and fled to the mountains, their behaviour being taken for madness. Melampus cured these women with hellebore and then urged them to joint carnally with young strong men. They were healed and recovered their wits. He spoke of the women’s madness as derived from their uterus being poisoned by venomous humors, due to lack of orgasms and “uterine melancholy”.

Thanks to Melampus, thus arose the idea, of a female madness related to the lack of a normal sex life: Plato in, Timaeus, argues that the uterus is sad and unfortunate when it does not join with the male and does not give rise to a new birth. Aristotle and Hippocrates were of the same opinion.

Hippocrates is the first to use the term Hysteria, he also believed that the cause of the disease lies in the movement of the uterus (hysteron).

His description of hysteria is the abnormal movements of the uterus in the body, resuming the idea of a restless and migratory uterus and identified the cause of the indisposition as poisonous humors which, due to an inadequate sexual life, have been expelled. He asserts that a woman’s body is physiologically cold and wet hence prone to putrefaction of humors, as opposed to the dry and warm male body. For this reason he said, the uterus was prone to get “sick”, especially if it was deprived of the benefits arising from sex and procreation, which widened a woman’s canals, promoting the cleansing of the body. And he went further stating; especially in virgins, widows, single, or sterile women, this “bad” uterus – since not satisfied  - not only produced toxic fumes but also took to wandering around the body, causing various kinds of disorders such as anxiety, sense of suffocation, tremors, sometimes even convulsions and paralysis. For this reason, he suggested widows and unmarried women should get married and live a satisfactory life within the bonds of marriage.

However, when the disease is recognized, affected women are advised not only to partake in sexual activity, but also to cure themselves with acrid or fragrant fumigation of the face and genitals to push the uterus back to its natural place inside the body. So thus we are led back to the ancient Egyptian cure.

So according to these male physicians, just about the majority of women’s health problems was because her uterus would for no reason, as it was not attached to anything in her body apparently, begin to move around anywhere inside her...and the only way to fix the problem was to find a man that could give her an orgasm.

In fact the Euripidy’s myth says that a collective way of curing (or, if we prefer, preventing) melancholy of the uterus, is represented by the Dionysian experience of the Maenads, who reached catharsis through wine and orgies. Women suffering from hysteria could be released from the anxiety that characterizes this condition by participating in the Maenad experience. But of course by the 1800’s a woman even thinking of partaking in something like this would find herself locked away faster than she could sigh.

In the 1^st century B.C.E Aulus Cornelius Celsus likened the symptoms of hysteria to epilepsy, stating that sometimes it also completely destroyed the senses, that on occasion the patient falls, as if in epilepsy. That it differed in only that the eyes did not turn, nor did froth issue from the mouth, nor were there convulsions: there was only a deep sleep.

The idea of the uterus wondering around the body never seems to really have altered right through until 1952, this idea was still very much in use. Even female doctors, Trotula de Ruggiero from Salerno, in the 11^th century, considered the first female doctor in Christian Europe (in the ranks of the famous women active in the Salerno School but was discredited), also maintained this idea. She views abstinence as the cause of illness and recommended sedative remedies to be used.

But as so many things of the time, much of it also related to religious views of the inferiority of women not only their physical inferiority but also the inferiority of their souls.

According to Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), German abbess and mystic (also a female doctor), using Hippocrates “humoral theory”, attributes the origin of black bile to the original sin. In her view melancholy is a defect of the soul originated from evil and the doctor must accept the incurability of this disease. Her descriptions are very much the same as her predecessors and are as followings (the only difference is she did not view men as being exempt form the “disease”):

“Melancholic men are ugly and perverse, women slender and minute, unable to fix a thought, infertile because of a weak and fragile uterus.”

In truth the mainstream idea of female inferiority did not only start with Darwin he just used science as a means to prove it, we find its root in the Aristotelian concept of male superiority: St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Summa Theologica Aristotle asserts that:

“The woman is a failed man”

The inferiority of women is considered a consequence of sin, and the solutions offered by

St. Thomas’ reflection leaves no doubt about what will overturn the relationship between women and Christianity: the concept of a “defective creature” is only the beginning. In question 117, article 3, addressing the possibility that the human soul can change the substance, St. Thomas says that “some old women” are evil-minded; they gaze on children in a poisonous and evil way, and demons, with women; the witches enter into agreements, interacting through their eyes. The idea of a woman witch, we shall call the “demonological version”, almost becomes insuperable: preachers disclose the Old Testament’s condemnation of wizards and necromancers and the fear of witches spreads in the collective imagination of the European population. The ecclesiastical authorities try to impose celibacy and chastity on the clergy. So with St. Thomas’ theological description we are seeing, perhaps, the start of the misogynistic crusade in the Middle Ages, the spark that lit the fire of older women or single women being accused of witchcraft and being in league with the devil.

From the 13^th century onward the struggle with heresy assumes a political undertone. The Church aims to unify Europe under the Christian banner. Breviaries become manuals of the Inquisition and many mental illnesses are seen as obscene bonds with the devil, “Hysteria” being one of them. “Hysterical” women are subjected to exorcism. And what was in early Christianity considered to be a cure becomes a punishment and Hysteria is confused with “sorcery”.

The pinnacle is reached in 1484 with the Summis desiderantes addectibus, Innocent VIII’s Bull, confirming the witch hunt and an obligation to “punish, imprison and correct” heretics. The German Dominicans Heinrich “Institor” Kramer and Jacob Sprenger are accredited with the publication of the famous “Hammer of the Witches”, Malleus Maleficarum. Although this was never an official church manual, it takes on an official tone due to the inclusion of the papal Bull with the text.

Something that many do not know, and which is interesting to note is in the title itself:

“Maleficarum” is the gender plural for female so as in “witches”, while “Maleficorum” would be male plural which would denote “wizard” and “Maleficus” is gender neutral. The tile would therefore seem to say “evil is female”. So somehow this does not seems to say that evil was being searched for to be removed but that the evil originated from women.

So along with this and St. Thomas’ views, most of women affected during the witch hunts were elder and single women. 

At the end of the Middle Ages this changed, opening some new ideas concerning man as a person. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) introduces the principle that man is free to determine his own fate. Juan Luis Vives, a Spanish educator, implemented Pico’s thesis. Up until this time the medical version of Hippocratic-Galenic tradition had reigned.

By the end of the 16^th century the Italian Renaissance had already tried to condemn witch hunts and to give scientific explanations of mental illnesses but Giovan Battista Codronichi (1547-1628), a physician and theologian, seemingly subordinate to inquisitors, criticized the medical therapy at the time aimed at treating hysteria.

Midwives, at the time, introduced the fingers to hysterical patients’ genital organs in order to stimulate orgasm and semen production. The physician (Codronichi) prohibited this treatment, an attitude due to the ideas of sex and sexual repression at the time and instead insisted on treatment of in the form spiritual guidance; he was a proud supporter of the existence of demons. Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576) and Giovanni Battista Della Porta (1535-1615) were also interest in sorcery and oddness, but did not see a demonic cause in this. Instead they identified the origin of certain behaviours in fumes, in polluted water (Cardano) in the suggestion or in the acquisition of certain substances that induce “visions” and “pictures” (Della Porta) but both base their considerations on physiognomy (the use of facial features to determine a person’s character or temperament). So here we see the possible birth of both the “fume theory” that caused diseases and the later practice of doctors who would take pictures of metal patients to determine the onset of their illness and when it would begin to end by studying facial expressions.

So this lands us firmly back were we started.

By 1859, it was claimed that a quarter of all women suffered from hysteria. This made sense if you consider that there was a 75-page catalogue with possible symptoms.

What were considered to be some of these the symptoms of “Hysteria”:

·         Heaviness in the limbs

·         Insomnia

·         Faintness

·         Irritability

·         Fluid retention

·         Heaviness in abdomen

·         Severe cramps

·         A strong feeling of ascending abdominal constriction

·         Continual sighing

·         Difficulty in breathing

·         Constriction in the chest

·         Palpitation

·         Feeling of foreign body lodged in the throat (“lump in the throat”)

·         Swelling of the neck and the jugular veins

·         Shortness of breath

·         Suffocation

·         Headache

·         Clenched teeth

·         Generalized and voluntary tensing of muscles of locomotion

·         An inexplicable urge to perform rigorous activities that will help to let off steam

·         When one attempt to perform rigorous activities, such as shouting, one experiences and inability to do so

·         Due to a shutdown of the muscular-skeletal system

In server cases additional symptoms:

·         Wild and painful cries

·         Incomplete loss of consciousness

·         Enormously swollen neck

·         Violent and tumultuous heartbeats

·         Involuntary locomotor muscle contraction

·         Frightening generalised convulsions

·         Violent movement

·         Prominence of veins in the neck area

·         The desire to cry out in despair

Physical symptoms:

·         Weakness of will

·         Craving love and sympathy

·         Tendency toward emotional instability

·         Hysterical trances lasting for days or weeks

·         Sexual thoughts

·         Sexual fantasy

·         Excessive lubrication

·         A tendency to cause trouble

Causes of Hysteria:

·         Weak constitution

·         Scrofula

·         Indolence (laziness)

·         A city life

·         Bad physical and moral education

·         Nervous or sanguine temperaments

·         A nervous family background

·         The over excitement of certain feelings

·         Religious or other enthusiasm

·         Fear

·         Worry

·         Depression

·         Mental strain

·         Traumatism and prolonged sickness

So just about anything thing that happens in everyday life could result in a case of Hysteria for a woman.

It was even explained what types of women would contract Hysteria:

Women disposed to hysteria are generally capricious in their character, and often whimsical in their conduct. Some are exceedingly excitable and impatient, others obstinate, or frivolous, the slightest things may make them laugh, or cry, and exhibit traits which ordinarily they are not supposed to posses.

So is it any wonder that just about every woman that a doctor met was considered to have Hysteria if one were to work under that description.

And as mention before, even women acting out against the social norm and speaking out about her wants and needs and, god-forbid, her husband and his possible ill treatment of her was possible cause for admission. As shown in the extract above.

There were of course remedies for Hysteria, both home and prescribed by doctors:

§  Using Jambul – the black berry fruit. Three kg of this fruit and a handful of salt should be put in a jug filled with water. The jug should be kept in the sun for a week. Take 300gm of these fruits on an empty stomach and drink a cup of water from the jug the treatment should be continued for two weeks.

§  Honey – take one tablespoon of honey daily. It breaks down the triglycerides that cause blockages in the values of the heart, hereby avoiding high blood pressure, blood pressure remains normal and hysteria can be avoided.

To name just two remedies besides the  still used acrid and perfumed scents placed in the appropriate areas. Differing diets were also promoted to treat Hysteria.

Since one of the main causes was believed to be the lack of a sexual life, but not spoken out aloud, the general diagnosis was still said to be cause by a “wondering” uterus, something men during the Victorian era did not suffer from. And repression of sexual desires, especially for women seemed predominate what was prescribed by doctors should you be unfortunate enough to suffer from the mental disease? And didn’t want to be sent to asylum?

Well doctors recommended marriage for unwed women; also cold baths and douches were used as medical cures, along with train rides, rocking chairs or horse rides and in extreme cases hysterectomy, the removal of the uterus, was prescribed, as well as the application of leeches to the clitoris. If you through that was bad there was something even more frightening.

In 1858 a Doctor, Dr. Isaac Baker-Brown, who later served as president of the Medical Society of London, began performing clitoridectomies in his London Surgical Home for Women. He insisted that the only true solution for curing of Hysteria was the complete removal of the clitoris with scissors, packing the wound with lint, administering opium via the rectum and strictly observing the patient. Within a month the wound usually healed and according to Dr. Baker-brown, intractable women became happy wives, rebellious teenage girls steeled back into the bosom of their families, and married women formally averse to sexual duties became pregnant. One of the patients treated by these means was a woman who showed symptoms of “illness” by wanting to divorce her husband under the new divorce act of 1857 (which allowed both men and women to request divorce in cases of adultery, abandonment and cruelty whereas before adultery was a criminal offense for women and a man could seek a divorce on these grounds but a woman could not unless it was accompanied by abandonment, cruelty and incest).

Thankfully he was discredited by his fellow gynecologists, many of whom objected to his performing the procedure on women without their consent.

(In a side note, the practice was still performed in other places around the world till as late as 1937)

But if you were lucky enough to be able to afford to visit a physician on a regular basis you were most fortunate and a lucky woman.

What would be the reasoning behind this statement be?

Well since sexual stimulation of the uterus was still common practice as a treatment, and a woman did not approach her husband for such things, he approached her, what was one to do since self-masturbation was considered a huge no no.

Why?

Since it was considered depraved, especially for a woman to do this to herself. And was supposed to cause a long list of health problems, including blindness, even causing damage to the brain, you would not want to risk it.

There was an alternative; your doctor could do what was called “pelvic massage”. This was the stimulation of the female genitals to reach paroxysms.

There was nothing supposedly sexual about this, it was argued by the medical profession, that it was expected that the female would  and only reach orgasm during coitus which would be penetration by her husband, then there was also the thought that women did not  orgasm the way men did; she was simply a vessel for a mans pleasure and to procreate, therefore it was a medical service being performed to prevent Hysteria from taking root in their patients.

75 Percent of women were thought to suffer from Hysteria which was a chronic disease; treatable but not curable.

So women would visit their physician who specialised in the treatment of Hysteria, women of all ages who had been diagnosed or feared that they had the symptoms would hop up on doctors tables. All means of modesty was ensured. The doctor would cover his hands with perfumed oils that would encourage the movement of the uterus back to where it belonged and would thus proceed to stipulate his patient’s clitoris or by the insertion of fingers into the patients sexual organs. The patient would become flushed and announce that  her doctor had completed his duty. As it simply was seen as a medical duty, patients would report feeling calmer, less tense, and the complaints of sleeplessness and agitation would subside.

Of course it didn't last, patients would return for the following week or two weeks later on an appointed dated agreed between her and her doctor. Not only was this a medical necessity but it was a lucrative business as well. Since patients would have to return for continuous treatment.

Doctors who performed this service did experience a great problem; imagine seeing eight to twelve patients a day on whom you were required to perform this duty. And since it was a medical service patients had to report seeing positive results otherwise you would lose them to another physician who could stand and deliver. Male doctors found it difficult to treat their patients with their fingers and would often delegate the work to other subordinates, usually midwives.

The work of pelvic massage or genital massage to bring the patient to “hysterical paroxysm” was tiring work that often resulted in extreme hand cramps and aching wrist joints and strain to the physician’s fingers which prevented them from performing their duties as this manual manipulation often took an hour per patient and it was not always effective.

Other means had to be found to make it easier for patients to be treated.

There was a form of hydrotherapy – the shooting of water directly at a patients sexual organs – which proved effective and became fashionable but was messy, expensive and was not portable. With the exploration of steam power “The Manipulator” had been invented which was a table with a cut-out area for the woman’s pelvis. A vibrating sphere driven by a steam engine then did the business. But like hydrotherapies it was not suitable for doctor’s treatment rooms.

Something had to be done to help relieve the aching and cramping experienced by the doctors, so the “Hammer” came into being. This invention dubbed the “Hammer of Granville” was a drill with a small ball on the end. When clicking on the device it would start humming. The electric power was supplied from the battery the size of a suitcase, the inventor: Dr. Joseph Mortimer Granville. This invention was called a percusser, manufactured and sold to physicians to relief aches and pains and to be of help to the doctors themselves in relieving the pain they experienced. He never intended it for what it became widely used for and is still used for today, the first electric vibrator.

Dr. Granville opposed the very use or “mis-use” of his device as he termed it. In 1883 book on the subject : “Nerve-Vibration and Excitation as Agents in the Treatment of Functional Disorder and Organic Disease”, he wrote

“I have never yet percussed a female patient ....I have avoided, and shall continue to avoid the treatment of women by percussion, simply because I do not wish to be hoodwinked, and help to mislead others, by the vagaries of the hysterical state...”

But it would seem that other physicians were more thankful for the invention since it lightened their task of tending to their patients which reduced an hour’s task to mere minutes.

It could be argued that men feared the sexuality of women, besides not being able to understand it, they seeked to own it. Since it was viewed that only a man, in marriage, could satisfy a woman and yet these same men would take pleasure elsewhere. The other reason that Dr. Baker-Brown’s clitoridectomies were so popular was because where doctors originally thought a woman pleasure was only internal therefore provided and owned by man they soon realised that the clitoris was also source of this, and faster acting source at that, easily within reach of the woman. Therefore it was the bases of the disease and removing it was an effective way of stopping the disease, the root of evil so to speak. It is even more disturbing to note that very young girls, not yet teenagers, who were thought to be masturbating were not excluded, given that the source of what was considered rebellion and tantrums were treated quite harshly. Zambaco of Paris in 1882 reported that he had cauterized a young girl’s clitoris, age 10, with a red hot poker straight from the coals as a cure. He enjoyed an illustrious career.

It is interesting to note that with the invention or adaptation of Dr. Granville’s device it was never meant for internal use and was only supposed to used by doctors in their rooms but not for their patients. It was never meant to be for personal use. It predated the invention of the electric irons and the vacuum cleaner by a decade.

Soon and thanks to electrification in homes, portable home use versions came into being. And

although it was marked to men for their wives, as a other appliances were also marketed, it is doubtful that it was the men that were purchasing these items. And this was at a time when women could not vote, were deemed inferior to men in anyway. Soon not only were they available for home use but also were advertised in ladies magazines as medical aids that promised to relieve all female ills. The more popular his device became Granville tried to distance himself from it but it was no use.

There were musical vibrators, counterweight vibrators, vibratory forks, undulating wire coils called vibratiles, vibrators that hung from the ceiling, vibrators attached to tables, floor models on rollers and portable devices that fit in the palm of the hand. They were powered by electric current, battery, foot pedal, water turbine, gas engine or air pressure, and they shimmed at speeds ranging from 1000 to 7000 pulses per minute.

You would probably ask yourself if doctors really didn't consider what they were doing as something sexual. As stated before, men of the time, doctors especially saw good upstanding ladies as not cable of experiencing sexual pleasure and gratification. Those that did had something seriously wrong with them. But for some reason the idea that “hysteria” was nothing but sexual frustration, since men took their pleasure and to procreate and were not bothered with what their wives felt, seemed only to be an idea that the British and American doctors had.

The French physician Pierre Briquet of course, who had treated 430 hysterics by 1859 (the middle of his very long medical career), coined the phrase “la titillation du clitoris”, he understood that women did not reach satisfaction from simple penetration and that women also required sexual satisfaction (it would have been the French), in truth it seems that a number of French physicians reach the same conclusions that Briquet did from studying their “hysterical” patients. But of course this cause a great upset among the Brits and Americans.

So the sexually repressed women of the Victorian age found a back door to relive their problems by visiting their doctors on a regular basis and they clearly knew what they were getting an greatly enjoyed it. And when the vibrator as a medical aid was marketed their men might have been in the dark but the women definitely were not.

Of course, although this was the norm it was not the only way of course. There were the obvious extremes of trying to preserve virtue and the opposite which was the type of sexual knowledge which belonged to the underworld, to collectors of heavily explicit material. Such as Henry Spencer Ashbee, who is the supposed author of “My Secret life (1880)”. These collections contained everything from whipping, BDSM, to nuns and serving girls etc.

Besides these extremes there did seem to be a middle ground of those who realised that there was more to it. There where quieter writing that where in circulations but not widely as advocated it seems such as

“The Art of Begetting Handsome Children” dated 1860 which emerged at the same period as the word ‘pornography’ made its appearance in the English language.

 ‘When the husband cometh into his wife’s chamber, he must entertain her with all kinds of dalliance, wanton behaviour, and allurements to venery. But if he perceive her to be slow, and more cold, he must cherish, embrace and tickle her; and shall not abruptly (the nerves being suddenly distended) break into the field of nature, but rather shall creep in by little and little, intermixing more wanton kisses with wanton words and speeches, mauling her secret parts…so that at length the womb will strive and wax fervent with a desire of casting forth its own seed. When the woman shall perceive the efflux of seed to approach, by reason of the tinkling pleasure, she must advertise her husband thereof that at the very same instant or moment he may also yield forth his seed, that by collision, or meeting of the seeds, conception may be made.’

Although there were those that believed that sex was simply to be endured by a woman and it was only men that took pleasure in it, there were those who believed that there in lay satisfaction for both partners.

Not just as one mother was supposed to have told her daughter “lie back and think of England”.

By 1952, the American Psychiatric Association concluded that female hysteria was a myth, not a disease, more than half a century after Dr, Granville’s death, and it was struck from the roll.

Of course this was just the beginning of the women’s liberation, as by as early as 1851 the feminist movement had begun to whisper. It would seem fitting that it began a woman’s power over her own body.

Yet the sale of vibrators and other sex toys are still illegal in many nations such as the UEA, as well as the American states of Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Texas and Virginia. In 2007 the US Supreme Court declined to hear a case questioning the Constitutionality of such prohibitions, leaving these laws in effect.