Technology of Orgasm: Hysteria, the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction
Search in google:
From the time of Hippocrates until the 1920s, massaging female patients to orgasm was a staple of medical practice among Western physicians in the treatment of "hysteria," an ailment once considered both common and chronic in women. Doctors loathed this time-consuming procedure and for centuries relied on midwives. Later, they substituted the efficiency of mechanical devices, including the electric vibrator, invented in the 1880s. In The Technology of Orgasm, Rachel Maines offers readers a stimulating, surprising, and often humorous account of hysteria and its treatment throughout the ages, focusing on the development, use, and fall into disrepute of the vibrator as a legitimate medical device. Analog Science Fiction and Fact - Tom Easton Even in Alabama, you can pop down to Wal-Mart and pick one up — the label says it's for massage and muscle relaxation, and the picture on the box shows it held against the side of a lovely lady's neck. But everyone still knows what it's really for.
PrefaceAcknowledgments1The Job Nobody Wanted1The Androcentric Model of Sexuality5Hysteria as a Disease Paradigm7The Evolution of the Technology112Female Sexuality as Hysterical Pathology21Hysteria in Antiquity and the Middle Ages22Hysteria in Renaissance Medicine26The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries32The Freudian Revolution and Its Aftermath423"My God, What Does She Want?"48Physicians and the Female Orgasm50Masturbation56"Frigidity" and Anorgasmia59Female Orgasm in the Post-Freudian World62What Ought to Be, and What We'd Like to Believe654"Inviting the Juices Downward"67Hydropathy and Hydrotherapy72Electrotherapeutics82Mechanical Massagers and Vibrators89Instrumental Prestige in the Vibratory Operating Room93Consumer Purchase of Vibrators after 19001005Revising the Androcentric Model111Orgasmic Treatment in the Practice of Western Medicine111The Androcentric Model in Heterosexual Relationships114The Vibrator as Technology and Totem121Notes125Note on Sources171Index175
