Antique device brings modern day delights to niece.
Browsing through pawnshops and thrift stores is my version of treasure hunting. One day, at a local pawn shop, I found a strange looking wooden box with an assortment of glass tubes, in a compartment, in the lid. A small oval semi corroded brass patent label on the back and an old frayed power cord dated the box to the late Victorian era.
After being here so many times, I knew the proprietor by name. "Hey Sam, what's the story on this old box?"
"Which old box?"
Holding the box up, "This one."
"Oh, that's something we found doing an attic clean out."
"What is it?"
"I don't know...something electrical."
"Does it work?"
"We tried plugging it in but when it started sparking we unplugged it before we started a fire."
The oak box was a work of a craftsman with dovetailed joints and brass hardware. Inside three knobs protruding through a brass plate with black numeric markings and a compartment on the right side that held a handle connected by a wire. A brass-encased meter prominently mounted in the center, contributed to the scientific look. The top lid was lined in purple velvet with several elastic clamps to hold the glass tubes in place.
If I seem too interested, Sam had a habit of upping the price. Before moving on, I gave the back a quick once over.
The box was intriguing, but I didn't want Sam to know. I loved repairing old electrical devices, especially ones that have an unusual look once cleaned and restored. A hobby that kept me busy over the years.
Meandering around the store I picked up a few other items and gave them a once over, but my mind was still focused on the wood box. I casually wandered back and asked Sam, "What's the price on this old box?"
Now, the pawnshop dance was going to begin, Sam quotes a ridiculous price, then I counter and eventually we will come to the price I was willing to pay. Usually I set a price limit in my head and don't go any higher because Sam would take my last dollar if I weren't careful. I set my limit for fifty dollars and planned to walk away if he wanted any more.
Sam said, "It's a rare antique and will be hard to find another one in this condition. So I am thinking a hundred dollars."
Picking up the frayed power cord, "It's a fire hazard, thirty five."
Sam countered with, "Seventy five and it's yours."
I was intrigued with this box, "Forty."
Walking away Sam replied, "Ok, make it sixty and we'll call it a deal."
Putting my hand on my chin as if I was thinking, "Is it all there?"
"Everything that we found is there."
"Sixty, is that the best you can do?" as I walked back to reexamine the box.
I held up the handle, connected with cotton insulated electrical wire, typical of late eighteen hundred technology. "The wiring is falling apart; this is in sad shape... I'll go fifty."
Sam quickly responded, "It's yours."
Handing Sam a fifty-dollar bill, the dance was over and I owned a dirty old oak box that could start a fire. On my drive home, I thought about how neat this was going to look once cleaned and polished.
Once back home, my niece noticed me going down to my basement workshop and asked "What's with the box Uncle Bob?"
"It's just something I picked up at the pawn shop today, I'm not sure what it is but it should look cool once it's cleaned."
Carrie followed me down to the workshop and as I put the box on the workbench and opened the lid, Carrie asked, "What is it used for Uncle Bob?"
"I don't know, but you should be able to look it up on the internet."
As I opened the lid, the purple velvet fell down over the glass tubes. There in the top left corner, I found an oval brass label, 'Orgasmatron. Patented H. Willoughby Poughkeepsie, New York.'
"Orgasmatron, that's a strange name for a device."
I figured I would give Carrie something to do, "Can you put that college learning to work and look it up on the internet; perhaps you can look up by the patent number."
Carrie spends the summers with us every year, it started out because her mom worked and needed someone to keep an eye on her during the summer. But now it was because she liked to spend the summers at the seashore with us and of course, we love having her.
"Sure, Uncle Bob, I'll see what I can find."
I carefully removed the glass tubes from the lid and set them aside. They appear to fit in the handle and were made of heavy-duty glass. Each tube had a wire inside going from one end to a round metal disk on the other.
I removed the inside top to see what's underneath. The insides were as primitive by today's standards, coils of wire, transformers, and some old capacitors that looked like they were leaking. The main problem was the unraveling cotton insulation exposed the bare copper wires.
After carefully separating the wires, I decided to try plugging it in and see what happens. After plugging it, in nothing happened, no sparks or smoke, so far so good. I carefully replaced the cover so I could use the knobs. Still no problems, so the next test was to add a glass tube and see what happens.
Attaching the finger shaped tube, and gradually applying power, the tube lit with a faint violet glow. One knob made the tube to glow brighter and the other pulsed the glow and the last knob made it pulse faster. The panel meter appeared to indicate the power level in the tube.
After seeing it operate, I still had no idea of its use.
Chapter 2
Later, Carrie came down to my workshop, "Uncle Bob, Uncle Bob, I found out what it's used for... It's a medical device for women."
"Medical device, what kind of medical device?"
"You are not going to believe this; I had to read it twice to make sure. It's to give women orgasms."
"What, are you're kidding me Carrie."
"No, it's true; it was used to cure women of "Hysteria" in the early nineteen hundreds."
"What's "Hysteria?"
"You are not going to believe me, so read this from the internet." as she handed me a printout from Wikipedia.
"Female hysteria was a once-common medical diagnosis (distinct from male hysteria), made exclusively in women, which is today no longer recognized by medical authorities as a medical disorder. Its diagnosis and treatment were routine for many hundreds of years in Western Europe. Hysteria of both genders was widely discussed in the medical literature of the nineteenth century.
More specifically, Victorian Era (1837-1901) physicians referred to these symptoms as female hysteria from the Greek idea of a 'wandering womb seeking its proper place.' The symptoms, according to their testing, could be treated by the stimulation of the female genitals, which induced 'hysterical paroxysm.' "
Carrie interrupted, "Can you believe that the lack of a female orgasm was considered a medical problem."
I continued to read how Doctors were paid to stimulate female genitals until the patient climaxed. Matter of fact the Doctors even made house calls to perform this treatment.
It went on to describe how Doctors did this so often they were often developing cramps in their hands and fingers.
Carrie said, "Can you believe women used to pay a Doctor to be finger fucked."
"No, it's hard to believe."
"Here read this about how they did it."
"The Doctor didn't hide the fact that he reached under women's skirts to heal hysteria through the magical power of his fine and gentle massage.
He didn't have to. For during the Victorian Era, when a good woman was not supposed to have sexual cravings, this form of treatment was well accepted. "
Carrie,"What a treatment."
"In the mid-1800s, when Doctors practiced, he was limited to the use of his hands. This was time-consuming work. Because of this, by the time he made his rounds treating the hysterical females, he found that the patients at the beginning of his list needed repeat treatments.
However, other doctors of the time felt they couldn't handle the demand by manual methods alone.
Were women really so sick or demanding?
It seems they were both. Business was so good that the doctors had more patients than they could handle. In 1883 a British physician, Dr. J.M. Granville, developed the perceteur or mechanical vibrator."
"Wow, Carrie, that's some story, but this is not a vibrator so what does it have to do with "Hysteria."
"What we have is a variation of a Violet Ray machine, here is more information and a picture that looks like our machine."
"The Violet Ray High Frequency Unit.