Hysteria: The Story Of The Vibrator Has Never Been So Funny

Hysteria: The Story Of The Vibrator Has Never Been So Funny

By Ksenia Sobchak

In days gone by, female arousal was considered to be a medical condition that needed (frequent) treating. The condition, particular only to women, was called hysteria. If you suffered from hysteria, you were instructed to visit the appropriate doctor immediately who would tickle your delicates until your hysteria had safely dissipated in a satisfying orgasm. And, as a growing number of women in the modern world indeed did ‘suffer’ from this condition, something had to be done. Technology had to intervene.

And so, enter the vibrator.

This 2011 film (due for release in Vancouver only this week) tells the story of a young English doctor employed under London’s leading physician who has his hands full, quite literally, and needs a second pair of randy hands for all the women queuing up outside.

You see a series of comedic solutions to this feminine problem, but at the end of the day, the dashing doctors just had to use their hands to stimulate the ladies into paroxysms of delight that miraculously – but temporarily – cured their patients.

The new doctor, Dr. Mortimer Granville, embarks on an adventure of intimacy, orgasms and – dare we say – love as he experiments with a whole lot of good vibrations and an entourage of enthusiastic hysteria sufferers. With the help of an inventor friend, he soon comes up with the one invention that revolutionised the world and the concept of female sexuality in the late 1880s: the vibrator.

This film is a series of charming ups and downs, is hilariously entertaining, and has a stellar cast including Maggie Gyllenhaal, Hugh Dancy and Jonathan Pryce. If you’ve ever wondered who came up with every woman’s best friend, this is the film to tell the tale with charming etiquette for a typically English story of invention.