Victorian doctors were not using vibrators on female patients – it was even stranger than that The nineteenth century saw a medical craze for gynaecological and pelvic ‘massage’

Today, the Victorians have something of a prudish reputation. We thoroughly enjoy sniggering at the idea they found table legs offensive and gleefully point out the hypocrisy of a society that bashfully called trousers ‘sit down upons’, but recommended yoghurt enemas and cock rings to prevent masturbation.

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Another story that has dogged the Victorians for the last twenty years or so is that doctors invented the vibrator in the nineteenth century to masturbate their female patients to orgasm to cure them of the mysterious disease called ‘hysteria’.

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Except they didn’t. As popular as this story is, historians have long known it is a nonsense. Fern Riddell has been banging this particular drum since 2014, Lesley Hall has been picking it apart in her blog for years, and I threw my hat into the ring last year. In August of this year, Hallie Lieberman and Eric Schatzberg published an article dismantling the origins of this myth in the Journal of Positive Sexuality. It seems like the message is finally starting to get through.

‘As popular as this story is, historians have long known it is a nonsense’

The news that the Victorians were not diddling their patients started to make a few headlines, much to the relief of those who had been near driven to hysteria shouting it to all and sundry. Finally, we may be able to put this one to bed.

Pelvic massagers

But just because Victorian doctors were not using vibrators to ‘cure’ hysterical women, does not mean that they were not doing some very dubious things indeed to their patients. The nineteenth-century medical craze for gynaecological and pelvic ‘massage’ was one such treatment.

Pelvic massage was pioneered by physicians and the Swedish obstetrician and gynaecologist, Thure Brandt (1819-1895), who began treating women in 1861. The ‘Brandt method’ of pelvic massage and ‘manipulating the womb’ proved very popular and was widely reported at the time. The New York Medical Journal (1876) was one of many journals that described the technique in some detail. “Brandt claims that his method of treatment is useful in prolapses and protrusion of the uterus; prolapse of the vagina; hypertrophy and induration of the uterus; ulcerations; abnormal haemorrhage, depending on relaxation of the uterus; tendency to miscarriage; slight hypertrophy of the ovaries.”

What exactly did this ‘massage’ entail?

Much of the massage is carried out externally, and involves the physician pushing down on the patient’s pelvic area, ‘combined with vibratory shaking’, as well as stretching out her arms, spine and legs – again, with ‘vibratory shaking’.

If this wasn’t clear enough, in 1895 Brandt published ‘The Physiotherapy in Gynaecology and the Mechanical Treatment of Diseases of the Uterus and its Appendages’, which contains possibly the most terrifying illustrations of any massage ever produced in medical history.

Once you have moved past the fact that the doctor and patient strongly resemble escapees from Area 51, you will notice that the technique is largely about applying pressure to the pelvic area in a variety of odd positions. Once the good doctor had finished this, he could move on to the internal part of the massage, which does not require a vibrator but only a couple of fingers – and some more ‘vibratory shaking’.

One of Brandt’s many followers was Dr Robert Ziegenspeck (1856-1918), who provided detailed instructions of the internal massage in his ‘Massage Treatment (Thure Brandt) in Diseases of Women: for Practitioners’ (1898).

Ziegenspeck emphasises this ‘localised’ treatment requires plenty of ‘massage and stretching’, with two fingers in the vulva and the spare hand pushing down on the abdomen. And if you were still unsure of what you were doing, Zigenspeck supplied this handy seven-point guide:

(1) The patient’s dress is not removed, not even thrown back, but merely opened around the waist. The corset likewise is loosened, so that no hook or band may interfere. The chemise is then pulled up so far that the hand can be placed upon the bare abdomen; the abdomen itself, however, is not uncovered. (2) The finger to be introduced into the vagina, from underneath the knee of the side corresponding to the hand employed, can also be advanced beneath the dress towards the vaginal orifice without the knees being separated. (3) Only one finger is introduced under all circumstances – preferably the forefinger, except in ventro-vaginal-rectal palpation, where the forefinger is inserted into the rectum and the thumb into the vagina. (4) The hand laid upon the abdomen feels its way towards the finger in the vagina, not with uniform pressure, but penetrating deeper and deeper by means of gentle circular massage movements. (5) The examiner, seated upon a chair at the end of a couch, takes the corner of the latter between his separated knees. (6) Only a low bench, couch, or so-called plinth is used and no examining chair or table. (7) The unemployed fingers are not flexed (examination with closed hand) but rest loosely extended in the groove between the nates (examination with open hand).

Sexual ‘irritation’

It’s very difficult to read this and not arrive at the conclusion that this is really just fancy fingering, and it seems that this ‘treatment’ drew similar criticism in the nineteenth century.

Zigenspeck laments the massage “has been unjustly reproached” for causing “sexual irritation’” (read: sexual stimulation). He claims that although “there are women of abnormal sexual excitability, who become excited by every gynaecological examination,” it is “grossly insulting” to suggest respectable women “undergo this treatment in spite of its power to cause sexual excitement, or, perhaps, even on that very account”. He then advises physicians if any ‘abnormal’ women should experience ‘sexual irritation’ during one of these completely innocent procedures they should try “increasing the pressure a little, so that real pain is caused”.

Although there was a lot of shaking, or ‘vibrating’, taking place externally, it seems this was to be avoided during the internal part of the massage to prevent sexual arousal. In Handbook of Massage (1888), Swedish physician, Emil Kleen (1847-1923) directly addresses the issue of pelvic massage “producing sexual stimulations of the female genitals”.

‘Notorious vaginal-vibrations’

Kleen is clearly aware this was a problem, but one he is sure can be avoided with the correct method: “I have never seen Brandt employ the notorious ‘vaginal-vibrations’, and when I asked him about them he said that he never employed them.” But the simple fact that Kleen would refer to this as the ‘notorious vaginal-vibrations’ suggests there were other less virtuous physicians who did employ them, and that they were well-known for “producing sexual stimulations of the female genitals”.

Kleen recommends the massage last for about fifteen minutes and should never be carried out during “the menstrual period… because the treatment is too disagreeable to the masseur”.

‘What we do know is this was a very popular treatment and one widely recommended in the leading medical journals of the day’

We may never know quite what was going on here, or how many ‘abnormal’ women sought this treatment to get their rocks off, or indeed how many physicians had less than wholesome motivations for massaging their patient’s genitals.

What we do know is this was a very popular treatment and one widely recommended in the leading medical journals of the day. ‘The Lancet’, ‘The American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children’, the ‘Edinburgh Medical Journal’, and ‘The American Gynecological Journal’ all recommended pelvic massage.

So, although the story of the medical vibrator is untrue, Victorian doctors really were massaging women’s vulvas to heal them of their gynaecological ailments.