The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction (27 page)

39
. Hermann Boerhaave,
Praelectiones Academicae de Morbis Nervorum Curant
(Leiden: Van Eems, 1761; reprint Leiden: Brill, 1959), 290–92.

40
. Bernard Mandeville,
A Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysteric Passions
(Hildesheim, 1711; reprint New York: G. Olms, 1981). For a modern reference to female equestrian orgasm, see Jane Mcllvaine McClary, A
Portion for Foxes
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 162–63.

41
. Robert H. MacDonald, “The Frightful Consequences of Onanism: Notes on the History of a Delusion,”
Journal of the History of Ideas
28, no. 3 (1967): 425.

42
. The work cited is Albrecht von Haller’s
Disputationes ad Morborum Historiam et Curationem Facientes
(Lausanne: Marci-Michael Bousquet, 1757–60).

43
. William Cullen,
First Lines of the Practice of Physic
(Edinburgh: Bell, Bradfute, 1791), 4:96–115.

44
. Accounts of this appear in David Hume,
Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals
, 3d ed. rev. (1777; reprint Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 124–25, and Louis Basile Carré de Montgeron,
La verité des miracles operés par l’intercession de M. de Paris
(Utrecht: Libraires de Compagnie, 1737). Charles K. Mills remarks darkly that “great immorality prevailed in the secret meetings of the believers”; see “Hysteria,” in A
System of Practical Medicine
, vol. 5,
Diseases of the Nervous System
, ed. William Pepper and Louis Starr (Philadelphia: Lea Brothers, 1886), 224.

45
. Charles MacKay,
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
(London, 1841; reprint New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1972), 318, 323; see also Geoffrey Sutton, “Electric Medicine and Mesmerism,”
Isis
72, no. 263 (1981): 375–92.

46
. Franz Josef Gall,
Anatomie et physiologie du système nerveux en général
(Paris: F. Schoell, 1810–19), 3:86: “La crise ne manquoit jamais de se terminer par une évacuation qui avoit lieu avec tressaillements de la volupté, et dans une véritable extase; après quoi, elle restoit sans attaques pendant quelques temps.”

47
. See, for example, Roger Thompson,
Sex in Middlesex: Popular Mores in a Massachusetts County, 1649–1699
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986), 42.

48
. Jan Goldstein,
Console and Classify: The French Psychiatric Profession in the Nineteenth Century
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 324.

49
. Thomas Stretch Dowse,
Lectures on Massage and Electricity in the Treatment of Disease
(Bristol: John Wright, 1903), 181.

50
. The anemia hypothesis is set forth in Karl Figlio, “Chlorosis and Chronic Disease in Nineteenth-Century Britain: The Social Constitution of Somatic Illness in a Capitalist Society,”
Social History
3 (1978): 167–97. See also Robert Hudson, “The Biography of a Disease: Lessons from Chlorosis,”
Bulletin of the History of Medicine
51 (1977): 448–63.

51
. Thomas Laycock (1812–76), A
Treatise on the Nervous Diseases of Women
(London: Longman, Orme, Brown, 1840), 140–42; quoted in Figlio, “Chlorosis,” 178.

52
. Mary Gove Nichols,
Lectures to Women on Anatomy and Physiology
(New York: Harper, 1846), 181.

53
. George M. Beard,
Sexual Neurasthenia [Nervous Exhaustion]
(New York: E. B. Treat, 1884).

54
. John S. Haller Jr., “Neurasthenia: The Medical Profession and the ‘New Woman’ of the Late Nineteenth Century,”
New York State Journal of Medicine
71 (February 15, 1971): 474.

55
. Quoted in Haller, “Neurasthenia,” 478.

56
. F. G. Gosling,
Before Freud: Neurasthenia and the American Medical Community, 1870–1910
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 52, 114.

57
. Gosling,
Before Freud
, 52. For a discussion of male neurasthenia, see E. Anthony Rotundo,
American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era
(New York: Basic Books, 1993), 187–89.

58
. Ernest Jones,
Papers on Psychoanalysis
, 2d ed. (London: Baillière, Tindall and Cox, 1918), 559; quoted in E. H. Hare, “Masturbatory Insanity: The History of an Idea,”
Journal of Mental Science
108, no. 452 (1962): 9.

59
. R. J. Culverwell,
Porneiopathology: A Popular Treatise on Venereal Diseases of the Male and Female Genital System
(New York: J. S. Redfield, 1844), 165.

60
. Robert Brudenell Carter,
On the Pathology and Treatment of Hysteria
(London: John Churchill, 1853); Charles Delucena Meigs,
Woman: Her Diseases and Remedies
, 3d ed. (Philadelphia: Blanchard and Lea, 1854), 65.

61
. Meigs,
Woman
, 474.

62
. James Manby Gully,
The Water-Cure in Chronic Diseases: An Exposition
(New York: Fowler and Wells, 1854), 185–87. For Gully’s public relations difficulties, see William E. Swinton, “The Hydrotherapy and Infamy of Dr. James Gully,”
Canadian Medical Association Journal
, no. 123 (December 12, 1980): 1262–64.

63
. Curran Pope,
Practical Hydrotherapy: A Manual for Students and Practitioners
(Cincinnati: Lancet-Clinic, 1909), 181, 510–12.

64
. Pierre Briquet,
Traite clinique et thérapeutique de l’hystèrie
(Paris: J. B. Baillière, 1859), vii, 1–10, 37, 111, 116–17, 137–38, 291, 535, 543, 570, 613.

65
. Briquet,
Traité
, 123–26, 612–22.

66
. Wilhelm Griesinger,
Mental Pathology and Therapeutics
(London: New Sydenham Society, 1867; reprint New York: Hafner, 1965), 179–81.

67
. Russell Thacher Trail,
The Health and Diseases of Women
(Battle Creek, Mich.: Health Reformer, 1873), 7–8.

68
. Ann Douglas Wood, “The Fashionable Diseases: Women’s Complaints and Their Treatment in Nineteenth-Century America,” in
Clio’s Consciousness Raised
, ed. Mary Hartman and Lois W. Banner (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1974), 3.

69
. Albert H. Hayes,
The Physiology of Woman and Her Diseases, or Woman, Treated of Physiologically, Pathologically and Esthetically
(Boston: Peabody Medical Institute, 1869), 250–51.

70
. C. Bigelow,
Sexual Pathology: A Practical and Popular Review of the Principal Diseases of the Reproductive Organs
(Chicago: Ottaway and Colbert, 1875), 78–85.

71
. Auguste Élisabeth Philogène Tripier,
Le
ç
ons cliniques sur les maladies de femmes: Thérapeutique générale et applications de l’électricité
à
ces maladies
(Paris: Octave Doin, 1883), 350–51.

72
. Tripier,
Le
ç
ons cliniques
, 46–47.

73
. Richard von Krafft-Ebing,
Psychopathia Sexualis: A Medico-forensic Study
(1886; reprint New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1965), 33, 64, 77.

74
. Jules Philippe Falret, É
tudes cliniques sur les maladies mentales et nerveuses
(Paris: Librairie Baillière, 1890), 500–502.

75
. Gilles de la Tourette,
Traité clinique et thérapeutique de l’hystérie paroxistique
(Paris: Plon, 1895), 1:433, 461: “L’acte sexuel a été pour l’hystérique plus qu’une désillusion: elle ne le comprend pas; il lui inspire des répugnances insurmontables.”

76
. Désiré Magloire Bourneville,
Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière
(Paris: Progrès Médicale, 1878), 1:8, 2:97–193: “Th. pousse un cri plus ou moins prolongé: Oue! Oue! et jette brusquement la tete sur la ligne médiane (Pl. III C). Après un court repos, surviennent les mouvements de balancement: Th. fléchit violemment le tronc, puis le rejette in arrière, ces mouvement se répètent cinq ou six fois avec grand rapidité. Puis, le corps se met en arc en conserve cette position durant quelques seconds. On observe ensuite quelques mouvements legères du bassin … Ensuite, la scène change. A … se soulève, se recouche, pousse de cris de joie, rit, s’agite, a quelques mouvements lubriques, et tombe dans un vulve et de la hanche droite.”

77
. William Goodell,
Lessons in Gynecology
, 3d ed. (Philadelphia: Davis, 1890), 539–66.

78
. Franklin H. Martin,
Electricity in Diseases of Women and Obstetrics
(Chicago: W. T. Keener, 1892), 221–23.

79
. Friedrich Eduard Bilz,
The New Natural Method of Healing
(London: A. Bilz, 1898), 683–84.

80
. William H. Dieffenbach,
Hydrotherapy
(New York: Rebman, 1909), 238.

81
. A. F. A. King, “Hysteria,”
American Journal of Obstetrics
24, no. 5 (1891): 517–22.

82
. Sigmund Freud, “Charcot,” in
Complete Psychological Works
, vol. 3, 1893–1899, ed. James Strachey and Anna Freud (London: Hogarth Press, 1962), 16–21.

83
. Freud,
Complete Psychological Works
, vol. 14, quoted in Neil Hertz, “Dora’s Secrets, Freud’s Techniques,” in
In Dora’s Case: Freud—Hysteria
—Feminism, ed. Charles Bernheimer and Claire Kahane (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 238–39.

84
. Michel Foucault,
The History of Sexuality
, vol. 1, An
Introduction
(New York: Random House, 1978), 112.

85
. Jean-Martin Charcot,
Clinical Lectures on Certain Diseases of the Nervous System
, trans. E. P. Hurd (Detroit: G. S. Davis, 1888).

86
. Georges Guillain, J.-M.
Charcot, 1825–1893: His Life and Work
, trans. Pearce Bailey (New York: Hoeber, 1959), 134.

87
. Quoted in Ilsa Veith,
Hysteria: The History of a Disease
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 267.

88
. Editor’s note to Freud’s
Complete Psychological Works
, 2:xi.

89
. Sigmund Freud, “The Aetiology of Hysteria” (1896), in
Complete Psychological Works
, 3:189–208.

90
. Fritz Wittels,
Freud and His Time
(New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1931), chap. 7, “The Hysterical or Primary Type,” 222.

91
. Havelock Ellis, “Auto-erotism,” in
Studies in the Psychology of Sex
(1910; New York: Random House: 1940), 1:225.

92
. Christopher Goetz, Michel Bonduelle, and Toby Gelfand,
Charcot: Constructing Neurology
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 172–216. There was much disagreement about paralysis as a symptom among Freud’s and Charcot’s contemporaries. See, for example, Charles K. Mills, “Hysteria,” 236–37.

93
. Wilhelm Reich,
Genitality in the Theory and Therapy of Neurosis
, trans. Philip Schmitz (1927; reprint New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980), 54–93.

94
. Wesley,
History of Hysteria
, 2.

95
. George Swetlow, “Hysterics as Litigants,”
Bulletin of the Medical Society of the County of Kings
(New York), June 1953; reprinted in Cambria (Pennsylvania) County Medical Society,
Medical Comment
, September 1953, 3–9.

96
. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “Hysterical Woman,” and Smith-Rosenberg and Charles Rosenberg, “The Female Animal: Medical and Biological Views of Woman and Her Role in Nineteenth-Century America,”
Journal of American History
60 (1973): 332–56.

97
. Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English,
Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness
(Old Westbury, N.Y.: Feminist Press, 1973), 31. Hysteria is discussed on 15–44, esp. 39.

98
. Foucault,
History of Sexuality
, 1:104.

99
. Peter Gay,
The Education of the Senses
, vol. 1
of The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 264. There are discussions of hysteria on 103 and 478–82.