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 19th 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.
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 1st 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 11th 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 13th 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 16th 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
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.
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