Hysteria

Hysteria, specifically known as female hysteria, was a common medical diagnosis for women, encompassing symptoms such as faintness, nervousness, sexual desire, insomnia, fluid retention, irritability, and a "tendency to cause trouble."

Historical context
Hysteria initially appeared, at least in concept, in ancient Greece around the 5th century BC. We won't be exploring that, however.

Perhaps more significantly to our exploration is the nineteenth century role of hysteria. George Taylor, a physician, claimed in 1859 that 25% of women had hysteria, attributing it to the "stresses of modern life" faced by "civilized women." Perhaps most interesting: one reason for the claim was to demonstrate that the US was "catching up" to Europe in terms of development.

Design of vibrators
Initially, hysteria was treated with a clitoral massage administered by a woman's physician. However, this was a topic of concern in the medical community, and thus this gave rise to the design of vibrators. When considering the historical and social context, we can explain the design of such novel devices, which were primarily characterized by a more industrial look. It's clear that vibrators were not considered to have a sexual nature at this point.

Decline
In our research, we encountered two main explanations for the decline of hysteria:
 * 1) Throughout the early 20th century, people were gradually gaining more insight into the nature of psychological ailments. As such, hysteria was slowly fading away in favor of more precise diagnoses such as schizophrenia.
 * 2) As vibrators began being associated with sexual pleasure and/or satisfaction and featured less and less in mainstream magazines while more in taboo shopper's manuals, stores, and publications. As such, vibrators quickly had a changing role, leading to the loss of credibility of hysteria as a true medical condition.

It was very interesting to see a divide amongst these two explanations between academic communities. Specifically, literature from the medical and academic research communities favored the first explanation. However, the museum guides we spoke to at the Good Vibrations museum seemed to prefer the second explanation. This speaks significantly to the divide between two worlds of medicine and pleasure since the decline of hysteria.