For thousands of years in various societies, women had been considered by many non-women to be crazy. In fact, during that time, "female hysteria" was the general diagnosis for a wide variety of symptoms on the part of women, including, but not limited to, nervousness, emotional outbursts, and sexual urges (after all, normal healthy women were not supposed to have libidos). For centuries, physicians believed that female hysteria was caused by a "wandering womb" which did not remain fully affixed in one place in the body. It is not coincidence that Hippocrates coined the term "hysteria" from the Greek word "hystere," which means "uterus."
The cure for the form of female hysteria which resulted in sexual urges was for the physician to massage the pelvic area of the patient until she achieved a "hysterical paroxysm," a phenomenon now known today as an orgasm. Doctors in the Victorian era made fortunes by masturbating their female patients.The first vibrators were developed as a medical tool for this purpose.
We now live in more enlightened times (or at least some of us do), and the healing arts professions dropped "female hysteria" as an official medical condition around 1950.
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