[NSFW and CW for sexual matters]

Before addressing the specific question of the vibrator, I'd like to go back to Maine's discredited theory, to point out the elephant in the room: from the 1880s to the 1920s, many Western doctors embraced the technique of "gynecological massage" aka "pelvic massage" or "uterine massage" and used it on their patients.

As Lieberman and Schatzberg noted in their critic of Maines's book, these massage techniques, manual or machine-assisted, were not meant to treat hysteria, but a large variety of gynecological problems, such as prolapsus, metritis and vaginismus, to the point that some practitioners used them as a gynecological panacea. This was not totally disconnected from hysteria, as this was linked to the "wandering womb" theory: the point was to set a disoriented uterus in the right direction. The story of this medical "fad" has been told by Malmberg (2019), but its first years have been to some extent mythified in books of the late 19th century, such as the PhD dissertation (1895) of Perlia Peltier, born Gossoukova, one of the first French female doctors and also an adept of the method.

Part 1. The Thure Brandt method

The gynecological massage was invented in 1861 by a Swedish military officer, Major Thure Brandt (1818-1895). In Sweden, an early form of physiotherapy called "medical gymnastics", created by Per Henrik Ling, was taught since 1813 at the Royal Institute of Gymnastics. This holistic therapy sought to create a balance between the mechanical, chemical, and intellectual functions of the body. The Institute had close links with the military, and Brandt, after matriculating as as student, became a physiotherapist there. We can note here that those upper-class Swedish physiotherapists saw themselves as equal to doctors, and the doctors obviously resented that.

Brandt became convinced that he could to treat female patients suffering from gynecological ailments through massaging their genital organs, externally (by massaging the lower abdomen) or internally (by inserting fingers in the vagina and/or in the rectum). He had tested his external method in 1847 on a man who had suffered an anal prolapsus. In 1861, after studying gynecology on his own, Brandt treated a woman who had been suffering from a prolapsus of the uterus for 27 years. Unable to find a doctor to treat her, she walked around with her uterus supported by a primitive bandage. Brandt treated her successfully by external massaging, which led to further patients. He later developed his more controversial "internal" method, which could require two operators.

While this may seem strange today, as we tend to see Victorian-era women as extremely prude, Malmberg explains that women in that era, who often bore many children, had few options for gynecological health care. Chemical treatments could be toxic or addictive, and then there was surgery, which often resulted in the removal of ovaries or of the uterus. Infertility, infections, inflammations, and even death, could follow. Some of the medical procedures were nightmarish, such as cauterization without proper anesthesia, or the application of leeches. Many of the cases reported in the contemporary literature about gynecological massage concern lower-class women who did not have access to the sort of medicine available to the more privileged groups.

It is thus understandable that non- or at least less-invasive options could be perceived as preferable by women, no matter how they felt about having their genitalia being malaxed once a day for several weeks by an old physiotherapist with a military background. Thure Brandt, in his book, insists repeatedly that that the patient should feel as little pain and discomfort as possible, which does not mean that the procedure was painless and comfortable, far from it.

This also explains the later interest of gynecologists in the technique and its popularity in the medical world by the end of the century. A phenomenon alluded to, but not developed by Malmberg, is the presence in that story of women doctors, who were starting to get some prominence in the late 19th century. In France, the vast majority of the women doctors were from Russia, Poland, Bulgaria and other countries of Eastern Europe, and several promoters of the Thure Brandt method were women from those countries.

Brandt's method was at first rejected by Swedish doctors. Not only he was not one of them, but what he did was found to be "dangerous and immoral", notably by the professor Pehr Henrik Malmsten, who called it an "indecent invasion of the sexual sphere of the woman" (Seiffart, 1888). However, Brandt's clientele grew: women started travelling from afar to see him in Stockholm and physiotherapists from other countries went there for training.

Criticism remained strong. Brandt was not a trained medical professional and had difficulty to explain himself properly in writing. Some of his vocabulary was idiosyncratic and unclear. He called one of his fingering movements malning, a hard to translate (in this context) Swedish word that could be rendered as "painting". His early claim that magnetism was involved did not win him any favours with the medical community. When he was not called a "quack" (charlatan) by his enemies, he was gently called a "bonesetter" (rebouteux), even by some of his disciples (like Horace Stapfer). A little book published in France by Brandt in 1868 was welcomed with scorn by the press. French doctor A. Chereau, in L'Union Médicale, mocked the "uterine gymnast", calling the practice a "two-handed or four-handed fondling of the genitalia":

More than three hundred Swedish blondes have already come to have their wombs kneaded by this new Jacob, who admits that magnetism could well play a role in this affair. [The practice] was a plot against real science, honesty, and morality".

The article implied (jokingly perhaps) that the Swedish major asked complacent and complicit midwives to declare some women to be "sick" so that he could "knead" them and "cure" them.

According to Peltier, another French journal called the method "dishonest" and accused his patients of being "shameful women" (femmes éhontées).

An American review of the book in the The Quarterly Journal of Psychological Medicine and Medical Jurisprudence was also derisive:

We see no reason to doubt the efficacy of such exercises in some cases. Chapter V. relates to the magnetic treatment of these conditions. This consists in looks, passes, the application of the hands, and insufflation, the patient lying down with her head to the north and her feet to the south. The effect of all this is, to quiet nervous irritation — so, at least, Captain Brandt tells us. Altogether the book is a curious one but we hope it may not become a precedent for military officers in other countries .

Still, the local success of Brandt's practice drew the interest of Swedish and foreign doctors, who came to visit him, and the method started to be used in Sweden and in the Baltic states by professional gynecologists. Finnish physician George Asp, after learning that some of his countrywomen were seeking treatment in Brandt's clinic, visited him in 1874, wrote a book praising the method, and developed his own practice.

However, it was only in 1886 that Brandt's method was truly recognized by the medical profession. His successful treatment of Paulina Nobel, wife of industrialist Robert Nobel and stepsister of Alfred Nobel, led her to convince her husband to have the Austrian physician Paul Profanter visit Brandt's clinic in Stockholm. Profanter returned with a highly positive opinion of Brandt, and the physiotherapist and his assistant, Miss Johannsson, were invited to demonstrate the method in Germany. It was received extremely favourably by leading German gynecologists, resulting in the method being disseminated worldwide, starting in the late 1880s: first in Germany, then in Prague, Poland, Switzerland, Belgium, Russia, United States, and France.

In some cases, the Brandt method was interpreted rather than applied literally. In 1875, Swedish physician Gustaf Norström moved to Paris and he started to apply his own version of the Brandt method at the Hopital Saint-Louis. He had a very personal reason to do that: he had been forced to leave Sweden after botching a surgery, allegedly by mistaking a cyst for a pregnancy. The Norström method was adopted in French hospitals, notably by Ernest Leblond. Later, other French doctors, including Perlia Gossoukova and Horace Stapfer, made the trip to Sweden to learn the "true" Brandt method from the master himself.

In France, by the mid-1890s, the technique consisting in the internal massaging of the reproductive organs of women was adopted by public and private hospital facilities, though it remained criticized, as we will see. When associated with gynecology, "Swedish gymnastics" meant the Brandt technique, or a variation of it. To the annoyance of physicians, a number of "Swedish doctors", who may or may not have been Swedish, let alone doctors, started practicing it in France. These private practices by "doctors", midwives, and amateur physiotherapists remained a thorn in the side of the physicians who promoted the method, as they thought that they turned it into quackery. Gustave de Frumerie, himself a Franco-Swedish physician with a private clinic specialized in massothérapie, wrote in 1904:

It is not enough to be born in Sweden, nor to have spent a few weeks in Stockholm to become a master of massage. Moreover, in Paris there are exotic doctors who do massage and who would be as embarrassed to tell you why they massage as to name the university where they earned their doctor's degree.

-> Part 2. But what about sex?