Hysteria Trailer: The History Of The Vibrator

Maggie Gyllenhaal, Hugh Dancy, and Rupert Everett star in Hysteria, a movie set in Victorian London. More interestingly, it’s about the invention of the vibrator. Dancy plays a young doctor struggling to establish himself in the medical world until he’s invited to join a women’s practice that specializes in curing “hysteria.”

Hysteria, of course, was a commonly-diagnosed medical diorder in the Victorian era that is no longer recognized in modern medicine. One of the cures for hysteria was a “pelvic massage,” or as we call it today, getting off.