More Medical Myths

The Victorian physician thought that removal of the prepuce by circumcision was an appropriate and useful operation for ‘nervous complaints’. As the clitoris was ‘clearly’ the equivalent of the foreskin, would not its removal be helpful for female masturbation and nymphomania?

The Victorians seem not to have regarded women as sexless, incapable of sexual enjoyment, but rather, placing them on a pedestal, praised them for their ‘natural purity’ — in contrast to men who were simply ‘beastly’. Of course, within marriage, women could fulfil their natural role, find satisfaction and bear children, preferably annually.

There was a short-lived vogue for clitoridectomy in the 1860s, its justification employing the same type of logic as employed for circumcision: ‘nervous complaints’, masturbation and nymphomania. Despite apparent initial successes with the procedure however, the view that the clitoris was the male prepuce was questioned and found wanting. The proponent of the operation was vilified, and expelled from the Obstetrical Society, and his nursing home closed.

Unhappily, clitoridectomy (or simpler excision of the clitoral hood) found more favour in the United States, and continued there well into the 20^th century. There are enthusiastic reports from the 1970s about its efficacy in improving sexual response. Even within the last couple of years there have been reports of surgery to reduce the ‘oversized’ clitoris.

There’s a curious aftermath to this. ‘Hysteria’ became a fashionable disease, one found only in women, and having the usual multitudinous symptoms — ‘nervous attacks’, loss of appetite, loss of libido etc. The word ‘hysteria’ has been expunged from medical texts, though ‘conversion disorder’ has entered them. Hysteria has the same origin as hysteron, the womb. (Think of ‘lunacy’ and the moon or ‘luna’.)

Hysteria was treated in an entirely different way, one that was profitable for the physician because it needed to be repeated quite frequently, and one that was entirely risk free.

The physician, under cover of a sheet, provided a ‘vaginal massage’ until the patient experienced a ‘hysterical paroxysm’. In other words, the physician masturbated the patient to orgasm.

This ‘procedure’ was unpopular with (some) physicians, for it could apparently take several hours ‘work’ to obtain the ‘paroxysm’, time that could be better (and more profitably) spent with other patients. Cynically, you might say that the physicians’ technique was in need of improvement.

Help for the physician soon appeared, firstly driven by clockwork. The electric vibrator was one of the first domestic electric devices, though advertisements were somewhat coy about its real intended use. And the physician could return to more ‘useful’ work, such as the monthly change of ring pessaries for the control of uterine prolapse (at two guineas a time).