The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction (29 page)

62
. Sophie Lazarsfeld,
Woman’s Experience of the Male
(London: Encyclopedic Press, 1967), 308.

63
. D’Emilio and Freedman,
Intimate Matters
, 71.

64
. Clelia Duel Mosher,
The Mosher Survey: Sexual Attitudes of Forty-five Victorian Women
(New York: Arno Press, 1980); D’Emilio and Freedman,
Intimate Matters
, 80–81. See also Regina Markell Morantz, “Making Women Modern: Middle Class Women and Health Reform in Nineteenth Century America,”
Journal of Social History
10 (1977): 490–507, and Edward Shorter, A
History of Women’s Bodies
(New York: Basic Books, 1982), 9–16.

65
. Laqueur, Making
Sex
, 206. Lynda Nead says, “The ideal of female virtue was an important element in the feminist attack on the double standard …. The feminist campaign … colluded in the propagation of a single legitimate sexuality.” See Nead,
Myths of Sexuality: Representations of Women in Victorian Britain
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 23.

66
. Laqueur,
Making Sex
, 233.

67
. Auguste Élisabeth Philogéne Tripier,
Leçons cliniques sur les maladies de femmes: Thérapeutique générale et applications de l’électricité à ces maladies
(Paris: Octave Doin, 1883), 347: “Des observations si non décisives du moins assez multipliées, m’ont laissé la conviction que l’orgasme vénérien est lié, chez la femme, au concours de deux ordres, au moins de sensations les unes clitoridiennes, les autres utér-ovariennes; que la synergie de ces deux ordres d’impression est nécessaire à la production de l’orgasme physiologique; enfin, que ces deux modes de sensibilité peuvent être lésés ensemble ou séparément.”

68
. Edmund Bergler and William S. Kroger,
Kinsey’s Myth of Female Sexuality
(New York: Grune and Stratton, 1954), 7.

69
. Bergler and Kroger,
Kinsey’s Myth
, 48.

70
. Paul H. Gebhard et al.,
The Sexuality of Women
(New York: Stein and Day, 1970), 121.

71
. Robert L. Dickinson and Henry H. Pierson, “The Average Sex Life of American Women,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
85 (1925): 1113–17.

72
. Jeanne Warner, “Physical and Affective Dimensions of Female Sexual Response and the Relationship to Self-Reported Orgasm,” in
International Research in Sexology: Selected Papers from the Fifth World Congress
, ed. Harold Lief and Zwi Hoch (New York: Praeger, 1984), 91–94; Joseph Bohlen et al., “The Female Orgasm: Pelvic Contractions,”
Archives of Sexual Behavior
11, no. 5 (1982): 367–86.

73
. Grosskopf,
Sex and the Married Woman
, 35–43.

74
. Gebhard et al.,
Sexuality of Women
, 122.

75
. Ann Landers, “What 100,000 Women Told Ann Landers,”
Reader’s Digest
127 (August 1985): 44; Charles Leerhsen, “Ann Landers and ‘the Act,’”
Newsweek
105 (January 28, 1985): 76–77; and Ann Landers, “Sex: Why Women Feel Short-Changed,”
Family Circle
, June 11, 1985, 85, 132–36. Landers’s readers were asked, “Would you be content to be held close and treated tenderly and forget about ‘the act’?”

76
. Peter Gay,
The Education of the Senses
, vol. 1 of The
Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 133–44.

77
. Carl N. Degler, “What Ought to Be and What Was: Women’s Sexuality in the Nineteenth Century,”
American Historical Review
79 (1974): 1467–90; see esp. 1470–71, 1474–75, 1479, 1481–84, 1487.

78
. Marie Carmichael Stopes,
Married Love: A New Contribution to the Solution of Sex Difficulties
(New York: Eugenics, 1931), 32.

CHAPTER 4 “INVITING THE JUICES DOWNWARD”

1
. Samuel Howard Monell, A
System of Instruction in X-Ray Methods and Medical Uses of Light, Hot-Air, Vibration and High Frequency Currents
(New York: E. R. Denton, 1903), 591.

2
. Samuel Spencer Wallian,
Rhythmotherapy: A Discussion of the Physiologic Basis and Therapeutic Potency of Mechano-vital Vibration, to Which
Is
Added a Dictionary of Diseases with Suggestions as to the Technic of Vibratory Therapeutics
(Chicago: Ouellette Press, 1906), 56.

3
. For a discussion of these saws, see D. L. Simms, “Water-Driven Saws in Late Antiquity,”
Technology and Culture
26 (April 1985): 275–76.

4
. Carl Sandzen, An
Article on Vibratory Massage
(Philadelphia: Keystone Electric, 1904), 63. Sandzen says only that the device was intended “as a means of counteracting a sedentary mode of living.”

5
. See, for example, Wiliam Sermon (1629?-79),
The Ladies Companion, or The English Midwife
(London: Edward Thomas, 1671), 8.

6
. Ambroise Paré,
Workes of That Famous … Chirurgion
…, trans. Thomas Johnson (London: R. Cotes and Young, 1634).

7
. Audrey Eccles,
Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Tudor and Stuart England
(London: Croom Helm, 1982), 11–16.

8
. Theodore Gaillaird Thomas, A
Practical Treatise on the Diseases of Women
, 6th ed. (Philadelphia: Lea Brothers, 1891), 394.

9
. A. Sigismond Weber,
Traitement par l’électricité et le massage
(Paris: Alex Coc-coz, 1889), 73–80.

10
. George Betton Massey,
Conservative Gynecology and Electro-therapeutics
(Philadelphia: F. A. Davis, 1898), 70–71.

11
. Silas Weir Mitchell, Fat
and Blood: An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria
(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1877), 54–55.

12
. Thomas Low Nichols,
The Curse Removed: A Statement of Facts Respecting the Efficacy of Water-Cure in the Treatment of Uterine Disease and the Removal of the Pains and Perils of Pregnancy and Childbirth
(New York: Water-Cure Journal, 1850), 15.

13
. Jacqueline S. Wilke, “Submerged Sensuality: Technology and Perceptions of Bathing,”
Journal of Social History
19 (summer 1986): 649–64. For a highly decorous discussion of Greek baths, see J. H. Croon, “Hot Springs and Healing Gods,” Mnemosyne 20 (1967): 225–46.

14
. Anthony J. Papalas, “Medicinal Bathing in Mineral Springs in Fifth Century BC Greece,”
Clio Medica
16, nos. 2–3 (1981): 81–82. On animal trails, see Charles B. Thorne, “The Watering Spas of Middle Tennessee,” Tennessee
History Quarterly
29, no. 4 (1970–71): 321–59.

15
. Apparently this was even true in upright Quaker areas of Pennsylvania, although the Quaker elders disapproved of their members’ visiting spas. See Carol Shiels Roark, “Historic Yellow Springs: The Restoration of an American Spa,”
Pennsylvania Folklife
24, no. 1 (1974): 30–35. Roark reports that six hundred people a day visited Yellow Springs in the summertime during the 1770s. The modern spas at, for example, Saratoga Springs, New York, and Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland, still have facilities nearby for sports and gambling.

16
. Francis Power Cobbe, “The Medical Profession and Its Morality,” Modern
Review
2 (1881): 306, 316.

17
. Georges Simenon,
The Bells of Bicêtre
(New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1963), 39. For accounts of life at English spas in the seventeenth century, see Celia Fiennes,
Illustrated Journeys c1682-c1712
, ed. Christopher Morris (London: Webb and Bower, 1982), 18, 45, 92, 125, 158. Fiennes points out that many mineral springs were regarded by Catholics as holy places despite their reputation for social license.

18
. Iris Murdoch,
The Philosopher’s Pupil
(New York: Viking, 1983), 16–31.

19
. Hilary Evans, Harlots,
Whores and Hookers: A History of Prostitution
(New York: Dorset Press, 1979), 47, and Alan Anderson,
Vanishing Spas
(Dorchester, England: Friary Press, 1974), 11, 70–71, 90.

20
. J. A. Cosh, “Rheumatism Treatment Centres in Britain—Bath, Ancient and Modern,” Annals
of Physical Medicine
10 (November 1969): 167–71.

21
. A. Cianconi, “La cure termali ginecologiche nei ‘Fontes Clusini’ in periodo medievale,” in Atti,
Twenty-first International Congress of the History of Medicine
, Siena, Italy, 1968 (Rome, 1969), 1:56–67.

22
. Tobias Smollett, An
Essay on the External Use of Water
, ed. Claude E. Tolles (London, 1752; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1935), 55, 60, 65, 71, 78.

23
. On women’s straightforward enjoyment of hydrotherapeutic establishments, independent of any sexual pleasure of the kind I am arguing for, see Susan Evelyn Cayleff, “Wash and Be Healed: The Nineteenth-Century Water-Cure Movement, 1840–1900. Simple Medicine and Women’s Retreat” (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 1983).

24
. Robin Price, “Hydropathy in England, 1840–70,”
Medical History
25, no. 3 (1984): 271–72.

25
. Sebastien Kneipp,
Pfarrer Kneipp’s volf stümliche … Vortrãge über feine
… (Wörishofen: Hartmann, 1894),
fig. 16
.

26
. J. A. Irwin,
Hydrotherapy at Saratoga
(New York: Cassell, 1892), 112, 123–25, 246–48. Readers uncertain about the meaning of “textural unctuosity” may avail themselves of the mineral bathing facilities still operating at Saratoga, Greenbrier, and other locations in the United States and Europe.

27
. R. J. Lane,
Life at the Water Cure: Facts and Fancies
(London: Horsell, 1851), 56, 58, 61, 102, 230.

28
. G. H. Doudney,
The Water Cure in the Bedroom
(Bristol: John Wright, 1891), 13.

29
. Joseph Buckley,
Recollections of the Late John Smedley and the Water Cure
(1888; Matlock, England: Arkwright Society, 1973), introductory essay by D. A. Barton and p. 36.

30
. Barry Cunliffe, “The Roman Baths at Bath: The Excavations, 1969–1975,”
Britannia
7 (1976): 1.

31
. W. B. Oliver, “The Blood and Circulation,”
Lancet
, June 27, 1896; quoted in Simon Baruch,
The Principles and Practice of Hydrotherapy: A Guide to the Application of Water in Disease
(New York: William Wood, 1897), 215. The
Lancet
had been highly skeptical of hydrotherapy before 1852; see Price, “Hydropathy in England,” 274.

32
. Gilles de la Tourette,
Maladies du systéme nerveux
(Paris: Plon, 1898), 174.

33
. Walter S. McClellan, “Hydrotherapy and Balneotherapy,” in
Modern Medical Therapy in General Practice
(New York: Williams and Wilkins, 1940), 431.

34
. John Harvey Kellogg’s
Rational Hydrotherapy
(Philadelphia: Davis, 1901) includes good illustrations of hydriatic equipment.

35
. Patricia Spain Ward,
Simon Baruch: Rebel in the Ranks of Medicine, 1840–1921
(Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1994), 231.

36
. Alexander MacKay, “High Season in the 1840’s,” in
Western World, or Travels in the United States in 1846–47
, 2d ed., vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1849); quoted in Roger Haydon, ed.,
Upstate Travels: British Views of Nineteenth-Century New York
(Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1982), 110.

37
. Marietta Holley,
Samantha at Saratoga, or Flirtin’ with Fashion
(Philadelphia: Hubbard Brothers, 1887). This is also true of Edna Ferber’s characters in
Saratoga Trunk
(New York: Fawcett Crest, 1969), 132–33.

38
. Quoted in William L. Stone,
Reminiscences of Saratoga and Ballston
(New York: Virtue and Yorston, 1875), 161.

39
. Harold Meeks, “Smelly, Stagnant and Successful: Vermont’s Mineral Springs,”
Vermont History
47, no. 1 (1979): 5–20; Neil Pond, “Tennessee’s Tyree Springs: The Most Celebrated Watering Place in the State,”
Kentucky Folklore Record
24, nos. 3–4 (1978): 64–73; and Ray Woodlief, “North Carolina’s Mineral Springs,”
North Carolina Medical Journal
25 (1964): 159–64. On cold-water spas, see Estrellita Karsh, “Taking the Waters at Stafford Springs: The Role of the Willard Family in America’s First Health Spa,”
Harvard Library Bulletin
28, no. 3 (1980): 264–81.