What Causes Hysteria?

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Hysteria had been a diagnosis for hundreds of years. Hippocrates believed in hysteria and thought that it was caused by a wandering uterus. There may be this belief that there is imbalance of bodily vibrations. Calis theory that your nervous system is powered by vibration. The treatment was massage until the point of full body convulsions.

It's a sexual health episode! This week, Mike and Aubrey dive into the hotly debated medical history of vibrators and ask: who fact-checks the fact-checkers?

Note: A previous version of this episode included language that referred to “the female downstairs,” implying both that gender is linked to genitals (it isn’t) and that vibrators were used primarily by cis women (they weren’t). We love our trans listeners and we don’t want to do anything that makes them feel excluded, so we’ve removed the sections where that language appeared. We'll be discussing this and our approach to handling feedback in more detail soon. Thanks to everyone who wrote in to let us know! — Mike

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