The Technology of Orgasm

Contents:



Preface

Acknowledgments



Chapter 1 THE JOB NOBODY WANTED

The Androcentric Model of Sexuality

Hysteria as a Disease Paradigm

The Evolution of the Technology

Chapter 2 FEMALE SEXUALITY AS HYSTERICAL PATHOLOGY

Hysteria in Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Hysteria in Renaissance Medicine

The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

The Freudian Revolution and Its Aftermath

Chapter 3 ""MY GOD, WHAT DOES SHE WANT?""

Physicians and the Female Orgasm

Masturbation

""Frigidity"" and Anorgasmia

Female Orgasm in the Post-Freudian World

What Ought to Be, and What We'd Like to Believe

Chapter 4 ""INVITING THE JUICES DOWNWARD""

Hydropathy and Hydrotherapy

Electrotherapeutics

Mechanical Massagers and Vibrators

Instrumental Prestige in the Vibratory Operating Room

Consumer Purchase of Vibrators after 1900

Chapter 5 REVISING THE ANDROCENTRIC MODEL

Orgasmic Treatment in the Practice of Western Medicine

The Androcentric Model in Heterosexual Relationships

The Vibrator as Technology and Totem



Notes

Notes on Sources

Index

""Rachel Maines offers readers a stimulating, surprising, and often humorous account of hysteria and its treatment throughout the ages.""

From the time of Hippocrates until the 1920s, massaging female patients to orgasm was a staple of medical practice among Western physicians in the treatment of ''hysteria,'' an ailment once considered both common and chronic in women. Doctors loathed this time-consuming procedure and for centuries relied on midwives. Later, they substituted the efficiency of mechanical devices, including the electric vibrator, invented in the 1880s. In The Technology of Orgasm, Rachel Maines offers readers a stimulating, surprising, and often humorous account of hysteria and its treatment throughout the ages, focusing on the development, use, and fall into disrepute of the vibrator as a legitimate medical device.