First, we need to understand the dreaded, terrible affliction known throughout the ages as female hysteria. During the entire medieval period and, indeed, into the 19th century, female hysteria was thought to be a real medical condition. Symptoms of female hysteria were quite numerous and included everything from faintness, insomnia, irritability, and nervousness, to an increase in sexual appetite, food cravings, and water retention. Centuries earlier Plato described the uterus as a wandering organ with a mind of its own that would travel throughout the body causing all kinds of mischievous ailments and complaints that were all chalked up to hysteria.
By the Middle Ages, another cause of hysteria was cited. Physicians believed that women stored female semen in their uterus. During sexual intercourse, this semen was released and merged with male semen. But this semen could build up inside the womb and turn toxic if it wasn’t released through either intercourse or orgasm, causing female hysteria. Nuns, widows, and young unmarried maidens were more susceptible to hysteria because they were not sexually active. The solution, however paradoxical, was masturbation.
And now, a brief look at the taboo of masturbation from Christian perspective. Masturbation, it was alleged, would destroy the health of women, causing masculine traits and habits in a female which would, in turn, lead to cross-dressing and lesbianism. Younger girls who self-indulged could damage their glandular development and one medical text of the time noted that “such persons are apt to be flat-breasted”. If a lady found sexual satisfaction going solo, it was feared, she would not desire marriage to a man, instead choosing a life of independence and, clearly, a society teeming with autonomous, liberated females is one doomed to horrific failure. (Note the sarcasm!)
Now let us see how the medieval medical community was able to merge these two seemingly opposing views into the widely-accepted concept of medically-prescribed masturbation and manual stimulation. Female hysteria, with its broad and eclectic mix of symptoms, was reaching epidemic status in the Middle Ages and the standard treatment — telling the patient to get married and have a lot of sex — wasn’t the cure-all it was thought to be. The symptoms kept popping up in even the lustiest of wives. Obviously, something more needed to be done to curb this chronic affliction.
According to medical journals from the Middle Ages, unmarried female hysteria patients were encouraged to ride a galloping horse or sit in a rocking chair until an orgasm could be induced. Married women were told to have vigorous sex. But if a woman wasn’t cured by sexual climax with her husband, then she should take matters into her own hands… literally! Doctor-prescribed masturbation!
Sometimes — many times, actually — doctor-induced orgasms were deemed medically necessary to alleviate the symptoms of hysteria. We kid you not! A medieval lady suffering from the ravishes of female hysteria would visit the local doctor who would massage her vulva and clitoris — even penetrate her vagina, if needed — in an effort to arouse her to orgasm, which would then, so the belief goes, release the pent up female semen and reduce the hysteria symptoms.
And, not surprisingly, the doctors saw a lot of repeat customers. Female hysteria was a chronic condition but not a fatal one; therefore women who couldn’t “relieve” themselves of the trapped female semen needed continuous, on-going medical treatment. By some accounts, hysteria patients comprised between twenty and forty percent of all doctor visits during the latter part of the Middle Ages. While this provided a steady flow of income for medieval physicians, it appears that most doctors viewed this form of treatment as a necessary chore. Guess it wasn’t nearly as fun for them as it was for their patients!
Massaging the female sex organs and pleasuring the patient — especially when there was no “return on investment” — was boring and tedious and could sometimes take up to an hour before the desired results were achieved. Dr. Nathanial Highmore, a physician who was a big supporter of assisted masturbation as a remedy for female hysteria, wrote in 1660 that there is a learning curve for properly arousing a patient that the it “is not unlike that game of boys in which they try to rub their stomachs with one hand and pat their heads with the other”. This makes us wonder what the good doctor was doing with his other hand!
Textual evidence of the time tells us that doctors sought out other means, besides getting their own hands dirty, to produce an orgasm. Some enlisted the help of a midwife to perform this duty. Others invented tools and instruments to take over this task. From these early tools of the trade evolved the dildo… but that is a story for another time period, the Victorian Era.
It is obvious that a paradox surrounds many aspects of the female existence in the Middle Age, from the notion of virginity to sex to masturbation. But in researching this chapter, we have uncovered an interesting comparison, that of the pleasure giver. Stick with us here… male doctors charged money to arouse sexual pleasure in their female patients, while getting no pleasure in return. They were performing a necessary task. Female prostitutes charged money to arouse sexual pleasure in their male clients, while getting no pleasure in return. They were performing a necessary task. Doctors were esteemed and respected. Hookers were not. While it would be easy to blame gender inequality for this dichotomy, we believe there is another factor to consider: the penis. Because male doctors refrained from using their sex organs in the treatment of their clients, unlike the prostitutes who used their vaginas, their acts of pleasure giving were condoned.
Age of Consent: Menarche, Marriage, and the Mature Vagina
“Now, by my maidenhead at twelve year old.”
Shakespeare’s famous star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet, exemplify the medieval mindset of early marriage. Most likely, Juliet was barely a teen when she fell for the dreamy Romeo. Likewise, Juliet’s mom, Lady Montague, was a young bride and mother herself as she tells her daughter, “By my count, I was your mother much upon these years that you are now a maid”. That puts Lady Montague as the parent of a teenager at the tender age of 26. Chaucer’s Wife of Bath was also a child bride, as she tells us “Experience, though it would be no authority in this world, would be quite sufficient for me, to speak of the woe that is in marriage; for, gentle people, since I was twelve years old.” If we think this is shocking, we should consider the daughters of royalty and the elite class who were often married as young as seven, or three, or even as an infant!
Least we think the Middle Ages was populated by a bunch of pedophiles, let’s consider the purposes of medieval marriage. First, of course, was procreation. Legitimate heir to carry on the family name was the fruit of a legal marriage and, indeed, that was the biggest reason why men chose a bride. We find an example of this, again, in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. January, an elderly knight in the Merchant’s Tale, knows his days on earth are numbers so only then does he seek a bride to bear him an heir. He wants a bride who is young enough to be fruitful, but not too young. The connection between marriage and childbearing was an important one during the Middle Ages. The focus of this distinction was places on menarche, a girl’s first menstrual period.