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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JHP who wrote (43665)	1/16/1999 2:00:00 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

I just remembered, I read it in "Wired," January, 1999 issue, page 82, won't be available on-line until 1/29/99, unless you subscribe. The name of the book is "The Technology of Orgasm," by Rachel Maines, published December, 1998, by Johns Hopkins University Press. Article says she spent 20 years researching the book, she got curious while researching in turn-of-the-century women's mags, "'I kept seeing these ads of women pulling their dresses down and applying a tool to their necks and shoulders.' The ad copy promised the effect would be 'thrilling,' invigorating,' 'all the penetrating pleasures of youth will throb in you again.'" "The tools themselves consisted of what Maines describes as 'a sloppy electrical motor in line with a handle.' They were at the time the epitome of modern machinery. The works were metal, the handles wood or Bakelite. The whole gizmo weighed 5 to 15 pounds depending on the size of the motor." "What was the link between vibrators and health? Hysteria, says Maines. Today, the word means anything from uncontrolled tears to wild antics, but prior to the 1920's, the condition had a much more specific etiology, it meant 'womb disease.' From the dawn of recorded history, healers had observed that women, unlike men, didn't release fluids during sex; [sez who?] as a result, pent-up juices, trapped in the womb, caused all sorts of problems - headaches, irritability, fear of impending insanity, hysteria. "With the same scientific insight that generated this diagnosis, the medical profession lit on a cure. Doctors and midwives massaged the genitals to 'hysterical paroxysm" as the orgasm was scientifically termed, to release held-back energies. By the end of the 19th century, some doctors were advising women to come in for such treatments once a week. "But the task of bringing an overwrought woman to orgasm was seen as a time-consuming and tricky chore. One early physician likened it to trying to rub one's head and stomach simultaneously. [Rub head and pat stomach, maybe?] So, in 1883, to relieve overtaxed physicians of their manual duties, Dr. Joseph Mortimer Granville, a Brit, developed the perceteur, a version of which Maines would find in the basement of the Bakken museum." Fascinating stuff.