The Scary History of the Vibrator, 1850-1950: Rest Cures, Clitoridectomies and a Myth That Won't Die

You've probably heard the story. Victorian doctors, worn out from manually masturbating female patients to relieve their "hysteria," invented the vibrator to save their poor tired wrists. It's a brilliant story. It's been in bestselling books, a Maggie Gyllenhaal film, and a Broadway play. It's also, as far as historians have been able to establish, almost entirely made up. The real, well-documented history of women's medicine between 1850 and 1950 didn't need a fictional wrist cramp to be...