See Dr. Grace Feder Thompson's
letter appealing for patients, Lydia E. Pinkham's
Vegetable Compound, and Orange Blossom medicine,
Dr. E. C. Abbey's The Sexual System and Its Derangements,
which emphasises masturbation, as doe Dr. Pierce, and several small
boxes of old American patent medicine for women.
 
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Dr. R. V. Pierce's patent medicine empire and hospital, often
concerned with women's diseases, cancer, digestive illness, fatigue,
headache, physical therapy, female weakness, hysteria, nervous
disorders, gynecology and menstruation
Selections from "The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser
in Plain English; or, Medicine Simplified," 1895, Buffalo, New York
Was Dr. Pierce a hypocrite?
It seems certain that doctors, midwives and other medical people have
masturbated women for thousands of years to
relieve female ailments. Johns Hopkins University Press published Rachel
Maines's book about this in 1999, The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria,"
the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction (buy).
Pulitzer Prize winner Natalie Angier's
book review in the New York Times expressed amazement at such a phenomenon
as well for the machines developed to accomplish it, which Maines pictured.
Machines? Doctors and their like often used
their hands but developed other methods to spare their
muscles and their time. After all, "masturbation" derives
from "hand" according to at least one
source.
In America, masturbation has often been out of favor with the Christian
church and with the medical establishment. On this MUM
site you can read broadsides against the practice, mainly male "self-abuse."
But it's possible that the same authorities who
preached against the practice themselves masturbated patients - Dr. R.V.
Pierce, for example, in this book. Dr. Pierce inveighs against male
"self-abuse" starting here (and shows
a possible example) and he does fleetingly say
that women should not masturbate, although
contemporary Dr. J.H. Kellogg is more explicit.
In these pages I compare evidence from Maines's book with
that from Dr. R. V. Pierce's best seller The People's Common Sense Medical
Advisor.
SarahAnne Hazlewood generously donated the Dr. Pierce material to
this museum.
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Below: Pp. 906-907 of The People's Common
Sense Medical Adviser
The first pages show the variety of physical therapy
equipment used.
The Manipulator,
below, could be used with a table to vibrate body
parts and possible sexual usage; see Fig.
10.
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NEXT | Pages 906-7 (Manipulator) | 908-9
| 910-11 (steam-powered Manipulator) | 912-13 | 914-15 | 916-17 | 918-19 (diseases of women)
| 920 (illustration of machine room) | vaginal electrodes | doctor's
vibrator set | The Chattanooga vibrator &
rectal vibration
© 2008 Harry Finley. It is illegal to reproduce or distribute any
of the work on this Web site in any manner
or medium without written permission of the author. Please report suspected
violations to hfinley@mum.org
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