Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Hysteria
Episode Date: July 26, 2013Welcome to Sawbones, where Dr. Sydnee McElroy and her husband Justin McElroy take you on a whimsical tour of the dumb ways in which we've tried to fix people. This week: We follow a wandering womb. Mu...sic: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers (http://thetaxpayers.net)
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Hey folks, just Macro here. Listen, just with a warning ahead of time while this week's show will still be free
profanities you've come to
Expect from us. We do get into some
adult topics. So if you're listening with the kids, you might want to make sure
They're comfortable with that. I guess. I don't know what your relationship is like with your kids.
I'd have that whole bird's in the beast talk with them before listening to this episode
if I were you.
You go ahead and knock that out.
Thanks.
Saw bones is a show about medical history and nothing the hosts say should be taken as
medical advice or opinion.
It's for fun.
Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery
boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of
distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. One is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four.
We came across a pharmacy with the two windows blasted out. We pushed on through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around
Some medicines, some medicines that escalate my cop for the mouth
Wow! Hey everybody!
It's me, you, but it's just a natural welcome
To solve a
Miracle to this guy to Madison.
You know me.
I'm Justin tonight here with you
Cross the ages across the radio week.
Okay.
Well, I'm Sydney, Mac Corroy.
What what's that thing you're doing there honey?
Oh, you told me that tonight's show was for the ladies.
So of course I'm trying to accommodate them.
Oh, okay.
Yeah. So I get it.
Show for the ladies.
I see what you're going for now.
I may have misled you.
Yeah, baby.
Tell it to me nice and slow.
I don't know.
I don't know that the ladies are going to enjoy this.
Oh, history has proven that to be incorrect.
The ladies will most certainly enjoy.
Um, I'm going to have to ask you to be really careful
in this particular episode that you don't offend
all the women who listen to our show.
Oh baby, that seems unlikely.
What are we talking about?
Okay, I think you're already offending them.
Oh yeah.
But we're.
She's gonna inspire us, that's me.
You never know what you're gonna get shown as well.
Okay, see, it's just getting worse. That's me. You never know what you're going to get. Okay. See it's just getting worse. Just getting worse
The topic I hoped we could discuss was actually suggested to us by our our very soon to be a sister-in-law
Rachel
Hey Rachel
She suggested we talk about hysteria. Yeah, I'm starting to wonder if my sensual voice was the right call
for this topic. This is of course for the ladies. So I guess in that regard, I was 100%
correct. It is for the lit well, could we say women is for women? It's for the women.
Oh, that was worse. Don't ever say women like that again.
Just don't say women anymore.
Just, yeah.
So why?
What are we talking about that could be so offensive?
So the concept of hysteria is one that you may not be familiar with now, Justin, because
it doesn't exist anymore.
No, that's not true.
I've heard hysteria.
I've heard people mention hysteria before.
Well, the word certainly exists, but the idea of it as a, as a
malady of women is outdated. It's no longer accepted.
So it was a malady? It was like a sickness?
Yeah, so hysteria, the condition hysteria, the illness, dates back
honestly to like 1900 BC. They found Egyptian papyruses, papyri, papyrri?
Papers.
Papers.
That documented a condition where women were, they weren't behaving themselves and they were
very upset and they were kind of nervous and they documented a nervous condition at that
time that they identified as hysteria.
Of course, they didn't call it that
because it's actually a Greek word.
What did they call it, do you know?
No, I mean, it wasn't really a term.
It was just pictures they were telling,
yeah, of like really women who were really freaked out.
Just going nuts.
And it was already, the reason that they identified it
as the condition that the Greek Slater called hysteria is that they indicated that a woman's uterus or womb, as you may
colloquially refer to it, was moving around inside their body.
Right, that's bound to happen.
No.
No.
No.
And that's actually where the term hysteria comes from.
It's hysteria or wandering womb from the Greek hysteria for uterus. So as your uterus migrates
around inside your body, it causes you to stress. Now, Sydney, what causes the, what causes
the womb to start migrating? Is it just get that wanderlust? Get here in the call of the
open road and want to see what's going on with the kidneys or why does the womb to start migrating. Is it just get that wanderlust? Could hear the call of the open road
and wanna see what's going on with the kidneys?
Or why does the womb start trucking?
Well, in all honesty, Justin, it doesn't.
Okay.
So that's the first thing you need to know.
But this idea had persisted and Plato actually had a theory.
So in fourth and fifth century Greece,
Hippocrates, held this belief, Plato wrote about it in Tameas. And he
likened the uterus to a living creature that wandered around
the body largely in response to smells.
Okay. So it's like a bloodhound that you store your babies in.
He actually referred to the uterus as an animal within an
animal.
Cool on several levels, though. He did it not so much
I can't imagine he was popular with the ladies with that kind of
But in that but in that it in those days the society was even more patriarchal than we have now
So maybe they just assumed well his name. He's named after Plato. He probably knows what's going on
Do you mean named after Plato, the Plato stuff?
Right. He was named in its honor, like the, the dough toy.
I may have taken my persona as the guy who doesn't know about the thing we're talking about.
I may have, I may have overstepped.
I'm going to overshot with that one. I'm going to walk back back. I think you overshot with that one.
I think you overshot.
Uh-huh.
And you know about something, presumably.
There are things.
There are things you know about. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, yeah, actually, I played a believe that the uterus moved in response to smells so that
in good smells, it would move towards them and with bad smells, it would move away, which
was actually a way that you could move the uterus back to its expected position.
It just puts bacon on the tongue.
Well, if you think it's, sure, if you actually, if you think it's too high, just put something that smells good down, you know, what smells good to a
womb? I mean, I think that pretty much what they believe smelled good to women. So floral
smells, she stores. Okay, see, cross the line. Was that good? Cross the line. See, I'm
really worried about doing episodes about women's stuff because I love, I mean,
I'm a very, you know, I'm very progressive and I'm very, I like to think I'm very aware
of my privilege.
I like to think I just sometimes I'm trying to say stuff that's funny and I just say
stuff that's not the right thing to say. I know. You're trying though. You promise to tell me if I'm trying to say stuff that's funny. This is a stuff that's not the right thing to say.
I know, you're trying though.
You promised to tell me if I'm like offensive.
I'm gonna, I believe me, I will tell you.
Okay.
So the uterus moves towards, you know what,
you know what, it would be a good thing
for you to say Justin.
Tell me.
You know what smells best to a woman?
What?
Equality.
Hahaha.
Try that on for size.
I will. Oh well.
Man.
We'll stand to that truth.
So by second century Rome, this idea was still widely held.
And Galen who wrote a lot of medical opinions at the time said that he believed that the
problem was that women basically weren't freeing themselves of their,
I'm going to have to just go ahead and say what he called it, of their female semen enough.
Okay.
So during, they believe, Gailin sounds familiar to me.
Where have we talked about Gailin before?
We talked about him in the, I think in the bloodletting episode.
Oh, he had a yeah, he was an early physician and Rome and he wrote many opinions on many things.
Many of our ideas where different medical concepts come from originate there.
Some wrong, some right. Galen, got you. This one wrong.
I strike Galen. So, so this is also why at the time
hysteria began to be known as the woman, the widow's disease, because the idea is that basically
intercourse could relieve hysteria. Good job, man. And so if a woman was no longer married and wasn't regularly engaging in sexual activity
Then she would become hysterical and so if she didn't have a husband or a male partner
But it would have been a husband at the time
As a physician you could always kind of do her a favor in the name of science and the Hippocratic oath
Gross, yeah gross caveman doctors will call it gross doubt in the name of science and the Hippocratic oath. Gross.
Gross caveman doctors.
We'll call it.
We'll call it what they call it, pelvic massage.
Shut up.
Yes, pelvic massage.
So physicians at the time,
now this idea, we'll talk about it in a little bit,
really didn't take hold until much later.
But this is where it first came from.
That is how
you could relieve a woman's hysteria is by causing a hysterical peroxism. Go on.
A.K.A. orgasm. Got it. So they knew about it even then. Well, they didn't equate the
two at the time. One of our many misconceptions that we've cured up
over the millennia that the female orgasm exists.
We've dispelled that one.
I've personally dispelled it many, many, many times.
Many, many, many, many times.
Many times.
So the prevalent idea at the time was basically
that if a woman wasn't having sex with men,
her uterus was sad.
And she would become hysterical.
There were conflicting opinions at the time, soreness or sereness, sereness, who is
known as kind of the father of obstetrics and gynecology actually.
He had an opposite approach.
He advocated
that you don't have sex and instead just, you know, get a massage, take a bath, hit the
gym, treat yourself. Treat yourself. Treat yourself. That's right. Eat some chocolate. All
of these are horribly sexist views of women, but that was kind of the only way
when people viewed women at the time.
Right.
So, although considering that our last suggestion
was to let your doctor have sex with you,
I think the hot baths were pretty good.
Oh, no, no.
That's a fair point, Justin, but let me clarify.
Your physician was not supposed to have sex with you.
This was a medical procedure.
So, just like our female listeners today, we'll be familiar with when you go to get a pelvic
exam, and it's very sterile.
You're covered in a sheet and you put your legs and stir-ups, and the doctors doing what
they do down between your legs. This is the same kind of situation.
It was all manual.
That's what we're talking about.
Okay.
So, just to be clear, still wrong, still gross, but not quite the same.
So she did it herself?
No, he did it.
Just use his hands. No, he did it.
Just use his hands.
Oh, okay.
All right.
Thanks.
You're welcome.
Now, sorry.
And also, sorry.
It's basically all the time.
That's just a lot of time.
You should just keep saying that throughout this episode.
I plan on it, actually.
Now from what I have read of medicine, you know, in our brief journey with this show
so far, the middle ages, the dark ages, were pretty much a time when everything was gross
always.
Okay, and then you're scientific.
That's my opinion, because at the time it seemed like everybody, everything just smelled
bad, and so that was pretty much what everybody thought the problem with everything was, and because at the time it seemed like everything just smelled bad.
And so that was pretty much what everybody thought the problem with everything was.
And so the solution was always to make something smell better by inserting a suppository with
something with some poperiana somewhere or use a SAV there.
And that was usually what doctors suggested at the time.
Oh, here's a tincture, just rub it down below
and things will smell better and then you'll feel great.
Now, it's important, I think, to like,
we're going so far down this treatment path.
Like, it's important to remember, I guess,
that this is made up, right?
Absolutely, yes, if I haven't.
Like, first of all, it's manifestations
for whatever they think hysteria was.
So, okay, hysteria, first of all,
it could have been anything that a woman exhibited
that was considered, you know, in proper behavior,
but specifically nervousness, faintness, insomnia.
If you were having muscle spasms, shortness, insomnia.
If you were having muscle spasm, shortness of breath, if you're irritable,
if you didn't want to have sex,
or if you did want to have a lot of sex,
if you lost your appetite,
or you wanted to eat a lot more,
or just the general statement,
a tendency to cause trouble.
God.
All of those were symptoms of hysteria.
So it's basically a sort of catch-all for,
you're not acting the way you're supposed to act.
Exactly, it probably originated from women
who were not interested in having sex with men,
and that idea would have been considered preposterous.
Do you think that, you mentioned the widows,
you know, calling it the widows, you know, training at calling it the widows disease?
Do you think that some of that may be considering the age of most women in that
category?
Do you think so?
It could have been connected to menopause because obviously, you know,
we didn't understand that whatsoever.
Oh, certainly.
I think I think it's what we would consider like a bucket diagnosis.
It doesn't really mean anything.
It's just where you put a bunch of
symptoms that aren't already otherwise assigned. If you don't know what's going on, call it hysteria.
And, you know, it's probably the first documented nervous disorder among women. So it was the first
time a psychiatric disorder was diagnosed in women. And they pretty much said, well, women aren't that interesting,
they aren't that complicated.
They were considered inferior to men,
so they probably only have one psychiatric problem.
We'll just name it the same thing.
I mean, that was really the prevalent idea.
If you, you know, in the middle ages,
we have, you know, weird saves and spositories,
but there were also women who were exercised for this it was blamed on demonic possession if you didn't know
what was causing it well and if your treatments didn't work well then it was probably the devil.
So we we tried spositories, saves and stuff in the middle ages. What do we try next?
So by the 1600s Nathaniel Heimor and English surgeon
put together that this was probably an orgasm,
this hysterical peroxism that we thought was still
the prevailing idea of the cure for hysteria
was probably just an orgasm.
That was when we finally put that together.
And because I can see the sheet in front of you,
I don't want to spoil the punch line,
but why don't you go ahead?
He also said that knowing this is essentially useless because achieving a female orgasm
is pretty much impossible.
And he likened it to trying to rub your tummy and pat your head at the same time.
Hey, listen, the fan you're.
My brother, my five centuries removed brother.
I'm there with you, man.
So I thought, you know, I like that concept
that well, we know what's causing it.
We know what to do about it, but.
Well, it might as well try to catch a unicorn.
Who can do that?
Yeah, the cure might as well be leprechaun gold.
Like we have no ability to achieve this.
Our buddy Thomas Siddenham I believe you may remember him from our opium episode.
He ranked it the second most common disease he got in on it too.
Yeah, of course.
And said that pretty much at some point in their lives all women are going to get it.
Which just underlines the fact that this was just it was a bucket diagnosis.
It was sure if a woman got PMS,
she was probably labeled hysterical
if she was upset about something normal
or if maybe she just didn't want to do what her husband said
or maybe if she wanted to have sex
or didn't want to have sex, all of those things.
And sure, maybe things that were actual disorders
like menopause or not disorders,
but you know what I mean,
causing actual symptoms like menopause
or a disorder like anxiety, everything.
I'll fell into that catch all.
The Salem witch trials probably related to hysteria.
These women would probably, at the time, have been labeled hysterical.
Now, again, this was hysteria caused by, you know, being a witch, demonic possession.
But again, this would be another example of women who were behaving badly
according to the, you know, moreays of the time labeled hysterical.
So this persisted until the 1800s, essentially. So in 1859, they began to tease out kind of the idea that there was hysteria, there was
some kind of nervous disorder that was brought on by the pressures of modern society on our poor
fragile female contentances.
And it never, I mean, it never occurred to us that like maybe this is not a real thing.
Like, we had so many different things that it could be connected to.
It maybe is not a single issue.
No, opposite.
By 1859, Pierre Brickett thought that a quarter of women had hysteria and there was a list
of at least 75 symptoms of it, and that was an incomplete list, but it was the best he
could do.
So the more things we blamed on hysteria, the more likely we were to die, we just kept
saying, well, it's just more common than we thought.
It actually, it was, of course, first in Europe, it was diagnosed.
And then in the young America, as more women were diagnosed with hysteria,
it was a sign that the country was becoming more modern.
You're finally, your country is progressive enough
to free cool women out.
We're quite cosmopolitan now.
We have fully 20% of our women diagnosed with hysteria.
We really feel like with just a couple more tall buildings
and some faster-paced music, we could get that up to 24,
25% by the end of the century.
It really, at this point, though, in the 1800s,
that was really when we kind of pinned the problem.
Because nobody's still, I mean, since it was
on a real thing, you couldn't say what caused it.
There was no evidence as to where it came from.
So we really began to pin it on this idea that women were not having enough hysterical
peroxisms.
And the number one symptom they began citing of hysteria was erotic fantasy and excessive
vaginal lubrication. I'm sorry women, I don't mean to laugh.
It comes from a place of sadness. I assure you, we're just
despicable and I mean I can't do anything for you now.
And I am sorry again, I said he predicted.
I am apologizing to you once again. I am the only male representative on the
program.
So I feel like I'm taking it a little bit of a matter of heat, but I am just totally just
wicked sorry.
So super, super sorry again.
It's actually, we're making jokes about it, but it's a really interesting topic.
If you do some reading online, I looked at the National Medical Library at the National
Institute of Health and I had a free article that was written kind of charting the progress do some reading online, I looked at the National Medical Library at the National Institute
of Health and I had a free article that was written kind of charting the progress of hysteria
through the, I mean, centuries and the way that it shaped our view of women and it's really
fascinating how this disease, you can't even call it that, but this concept, this false
concept has shaped women's role throughout a
Lot of history whether it is the vast majority of history, right? Exactly whether it is as this wild
Temptress this you know this thing that is this creature that is prone to leave lead men to sin or this fragile nervous
to leave lead men to sin or this fragile, nervous, frail thing that we must protect or, you know, the way that women are accused of using sex as a weapon, holding it over men's heads.
All of this gets tied into this concept of hysteria, which was basically a man's way
of saying, this woman isn't doing what I want her to do.
And I'm going to color sick. Yeah, and I think it's actually a really instructive example of a society using a male
dominant society using the its structural powers.
The control it has over the system as a whole rather than a one-on-one I control you.
It's the system being built, I mean, it's a rigged game for women while
this, you know, any behavior that didn't, wasn't in lockstep with how men saw their role
at the time could be blamed on it.
And even the women, I think it's interesting to kind of take a quick step back to the middle
ages.
Even the women of the time who were, there was a female physician, believe it or not, Chotula de Rujero,
even she wrote about hysteria as if it was an actual thing.
And the best she could say as well,
it's probably not good to, you know,
if sex is the cure sex, you know,
at the time was still viewed as, you know,
kind of a sinful idea for women to just engage
in for their own pleasure.
So she advised taking sedatives, youatives, to calm you down, basically quell your sexual desires
and take some mint and some musk oil and take an app and get over it.
So even women who are writing about it at the time were within that same context.
They held the same biases that men had placed on them.
Well, and I would imagine this is just extrapolation on my part and probably no small amount of
wishful thinking, but I imagine there were probably some women who would take solace in the idea
of a disorder that could explain it any feelings that you yourself weren't crazy about or
urges you yourself didn't like. I mean we see that today with disorders
and stuff that are not real. But people take a lot of comfort in, you know, some people
take a lot of comfort in the idea that this illness is responsible for all of their, you
know, any struggles they may have be having in life.
So absolutely. No, and I, without naming anything
so that we don't cause problems,
there are certainly examples of this.
I think that some physicians would point to
within our medical lexicon today
that are these same concept of a basket diagnosis
or a bucket diagnosis that we don't know what it is.
What causes it and our symptoms and presentations
can be varied, but we're gonna call it all the same thing because that's simpler.
But I think what's really important, Justin, that we haven't talked about yet is that
starting in the 1850s, we finally got serious about how to treat this awful malady.
Thank God.
Let's get those friggin' wombs in their place.
Exactly.
Now, and let me clarify, at this point, the idea that the womb was actually moving
was pretty much done away with.
Okay, so we still thought this theory was real, but the cause that we came up for it, we
didn't think it was real anymore.
No, we pretty much, actually, soreness, if we go all the way back to Rome.
Soreness was the first one to say,
you know what, the uterus probably stays in pretty much the same place except for when it's
prolapse much, much later in life. So that's probably not the problem. And the idea that this
had to do with either sexual repression or sexual desire or something like that became much more
prevalent. It was still not well understood. But it is this theory that led to the first treatment, the first kind
of prescribed treatment in the 1800s, the pelvic douche. Similar to the idea of a douche
that no one should use today, except you just direct a stream of pressured water at the pelvis until you feel better.
I mean, I'm going to say that sounds refreshing.
Does it, Justin?
I guess. I don't know what it's like in there.
I like, I like the simplicity of that.
But what I like you in better is that in 1869, there was an American physician,
George Taylor, who said, forget that noise.
This is America now.
We do things steam powered.
I'm gonna build the first steam powered vibrator.
Thank you very much.
All right.
Yep, it was essentially a big table
that you were just strapped to
that had a hole in it with a vibrating sphere
that you stuck in the hole.
And ladies loved it.
Well, I don't know if they loved it,
but I'm sure they used it. Uh, well, I don't know if they loved it, but I'm sure they used it.
You're welcome, women.
See, men give us a very small thing and they take away, uh, take it away a vastly larger
amount.
Hey, hey, you got that in the deal, huh?
You have to understand.
Go vote.
These were, these were medical devices.
So as we go through this history,
these were not to be used alone.
A woman was not to take her giant steam powered vibrating
table to the basement, strap herself to it, and have fun.
Honey? Honey.
Was that you?
I heard it on the stairs.
It sounded like, honey, it sounded like someone was
pushing a big metal table on the stairs.
You okay?
I'll be able to minute.
All right, you okay?
You need any help?
Just a minute.
I'll come help you.
Lay me alone.
It's of the neighborhood men.
Welcome help you carry that metal table on.
Now, this was done under the supervision of a physician or at the very least, if you're
going to have this in your home, under the supervision of your husband.
Don't do this alone.
And this continued to apply to the 1880s version
when Joseph Mortimer-Granville invented
the battery-powered vibrator.
It only weighed about 40 pounds.
Perfect.
Convenient.
Put it in your purse.
And physicians were thrilled because you have to remember,
up until this point, they were still actively causing hysterical peroxisms for women.
This late.
Yeah, that's insane.
There's actually a great movie about this.
Well, I say it's great.
I read about it.
I would see it yet called hysteria where they document a physician who spent so much time
catering to the needs of wealthy English women that he
got Carpal Tunnel.
And so out of desperation created the battery powered vibrator.
I'm kind of have to Netflix that.
And physicians at the time did actually, they were thrilled with this because they said
that this terrible task with which they, you know, their Hibocratic oath forced them to
perform for women that took hours, now only took minutes.
I actually do believe that, but you know, there was one guy. It was one guy who they'd all call, like,
ah, just get weird Dave. He loves this. I don't know.
The Freud, of course, jumped in on this topic, you know, why wouldn't he? This seems ripe for Freud in the 1890s. And
they, him and another physician Joseph Brewer kind of came up with the idea that you could
talk women out of it. Just bring up all the repressed memories and their sexual needs.
And would that be close? I mean, that's closer. I mean, while obviously hysteria is still
not a real thing, if you're used, I mean, that's closer to at least some sort of actual, at least they
are talking through whatever was the perceived problem.
I think that's fair.
If there, I mean, we have to assume there were women who weren't just not doing what
there has been said, but who actually had maybe conversion disorder.
That's one theory that maybe had anxiety,
you know, who some kind of therapy,
some kind of talk therapy would have been helpful
for the treatment of that.
So it's certainly possible that this was closer
for some women to a cure,
but you also have to understand
that there were probably women who had epilepsy
that were called hysteria as well.
Well, okay, so, all right, fine.
So what I'm saying in my great, in my great male
gender apology tour of 2013, what I'm saying is we may have accidentally helped a small
percentage of the women. Exactly. We may have accidentally helped someone. Okay. That's all
it need. By the late 1890s, I think this is great. It was recognized that another, if you couldn't afford a battery powered vibrator,
you could ride a horse, ride in a carriage,
or vigorously use a rocking chair
to alleviate your own symptoms,
or you could buy an electric saddle machine for your home,
which essentially is like one of those toy horses
that you can put a quarter in
and kids can ride outside the grocery store
Only not shaped like a horse home assuming just the saddle just the saddle
Mm-hmm and women could keep those in their homes and in the 1900s all
It's actually central to the plot of urban cowboy
By the 1900s all kinds of vibrator machines
Exist it. I don't even know yeah, they're're junctrubled to movie, where is it?
Is it?
Mechanical bull rider.
Oh, yeah, I don't know.
I don't know either.
But by the 1900s, there were all kinds of vibrators available.
It was actually the fifth home appliance to be electrified.
So they made the sewing machine, the electric fan, the electric kettle, the toaster, and
then the vibrator.
Priorities.
It beat out the vacuum and the iron by over a decade.
She's so peed, really?
Exactly.
I know.
And at the whole time, people are still saying,
this is strictly for medical use.
There is no more.
There is nothing pleasurable about it.
I mean, there is no better indicator. I think of how
small rural women played in medicine that like no one had delved any deeper into this question.
Nope. This is this is and you can use these and your husband can watch you and help you. They
actually advertise these machines for the whole family not to be used in the same area perhaps
but you know hold it on your face or your arms or your back,
vibrate something.
Vibrations were essential to a healthy life.
We had that stupid machine with the belt
that would help you lose weight.
Yeah, that's that same kind of idea
that those vibrations were good
and some of them were marketed as weight loss machines.
I mean, they weren't.
They weren't.
None of this was real, but hey.
None of it was real.
And by the 1920s,
these machines started showing up in pornography, and people started being honest about what they
really were, which kind of shoved them underground for a while. And in the 50s, you know, they showed
back up, but, you know, people were pretty uptight then. So, they kind of fell out of favor, and then finally in 1952, at long last, everybody
whysened up, and the American Psychological Association said, you know what, this is
bunk.
History is not a real thing.
No, it was just like to masturbate and just let it go, guys.
We had a, he listened.
We had a good run.
It's been 4,000 years.
Let's give it up.
So the term history was dropped from the diagnostic catalog.
There was no diagnosis made and we realized that there were probably lots of other problems
that we missed or things that weren't problems at all that we just didn't like.
I thought this was interesting as I went on my tour of sex toys throughout history that
in Alabama you still can't buy a sex toy for anything other than medical purposes.
At least as of 2009.
So you gotta get two streamerschrains.com.
Hey, the wrong show, wrong show.
Now, you have to sign a waiver that says this is strictly for medical purposes when you buy
it.
So trust me, I just have hysteria.
Wink, wink. We hope you've had a hysterical laughter
Listening to I think I think we're still allowed to use that word. That's the one thing
I don't know from my research. Can I still say hysterical? I think it's lost some of the gender the you know the gender
I hope so and I I should make this quick now, Justin.
There were men who were diagnosed with hysteria throughout history.
Not really.
Yeah, there were times where it was considered a thing that might infect men later after it was,
you know, decided that it wasn't because the uterus was moving around.
But this is largely a disease of women.
I mean, largely, that is the part of our society that it impacted us.
Us.
Uh, uh, you, sorry.
Whoa. Hey.
Whoa.
Hey, you wish.
Uh, thank you so much for listening to solbons. We've hope you had as much fun listening as we've
had making it.
Um, thank you, Rachel, for your great topic suggestion.
Yes. Thank you soon to be McRoy. Uh, we, uh, we hope you enjoyed the suggestion.
You can follow us on Twitter if you want to suggest a
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There's always dope for ho. Alright!
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