When Female Hysteria Forced Doctors to Invent Vibrators

(Image credit: Hansel Sapkota/Quora)

During the Victorian era, it was believed that women were not able to feel sexual desire, so when women experienced symptoms related to normal functioning female sexuality, they were diagnosed with a disease called "female hysteria".

Symptoms such as anxiety, fainting, shortness of breath, headaches, epileptic fits, insomnia, irritability, and loss of appetite had all been attributed to hysteria. And to treat hysteria, doctors prescribed "hysterical paroxysm", which is basically inducing the women to have an orgasm.

So, for centuries, women went to the doctor to get orgasms. However, the doctors eventually found it exhausting to do, so they invented vibrators so that women can do it themselves in the comfort of their own home.