Female hysteria was a disease diagnosed in Western medicine until the middle of XIX century. In the Victorian era it was the usual diagnosis of a wide range of symptoms, including fails, insomnia, fluid retention, abdominal heaviness, muscle spasms, intercorted breath, irritability, strong headaches, loss of appetite and ′′ tendency to cause problems ".
Women who exhibited anxiety, mood swings and depression were sent by their husbands to the doctor, who diagnosed them with a condition called ′′ hysteria ". Their treatment was based on a ′′ pelvic massage ′′ in order to achieve the hysterical paroxism, known today as orgasm.
It was so much the number of women who started to attend consultations to receive their ′′ treatment for hysteria ′′ that doctors at the end of the workday were exhausted and with their hands cramped; so they decided to invent a useful device that produced rhythmic vibrations and hysterical paroxyism was achieved faster and easier in the patient without the common manual massage: and here is the origin of the vibrator. At that time it was seen as a healing device, even the most wealthy women, had them in their homes for when they felt ′′ hysteria buds ". After the appearance of that device in pornographic films, it took a netly sexual nuance - erotic and began to be seen as a sinful instrument.
From this alleged disease, Sigmund Freud began to develop his guess of the unconscious. Freud ended up claiming that what was known as female hysteria was triggered by a traumatic fact that had been suppressed in the unconscious, but it continued to emerge in the form of attacks that lacked explanation. It was the beginning of what we know today as Psychoanalysis.
History is in favor of the theory that claims Sigmund Freud and Jean-Martin Charcot were the ones who caused hysteria to disappear as a disease by digging into the study of the mind. As diagnosis techniques improved, the number of cases decreased until none left.