The brilliant movie “Hysteria” has brought back to our awareness a time when a woman’s stress-based symptoms were often given a catch-all diagnosis of “female hysteria”. Apparently hordes of women presented their male physicians with puzzling symptoms including faintness, nervousness, sexual desire, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in abdomen, muscle spasm, shortness of breath, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, and “a tendency to cause trouble”. The movie makes the case that the diagnosis was often used to lump women’s dissatisfactions with their lives and their mates into a neat category. And there was money to be made by the perceptive physicians who saw that this “disease” was not fatal and required on-going, lucrative treatments.
To alleviate the tedious work of the current “pelvic massage” treatments that doctors and midwives provided in many cases, the electric vibrator was invented. And, as we know, it became a perennial favorite of women, although this diagnosis (thankfully) is no longer used for these symptoms in women.
Men, too, found benefit from the vibrator as a healing modality. It was widely accepted, if we can infer it from the newspaper ads of the time, that vibration was a key to our health and vitality.
So, when we say we are vibrational beings, ancient and modern science has our backs. And speaking of backs, when I have the spare cash, one of the first things I’ll buy is the vibrating massage chair. I’m the one who’s always testing it out at the stores. It’s an amazing stress-reducer!
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