A Young Working-Class Nymphomaniac

The medical understanding of female sexuality shared by both Mrs. B. and Dr. Storer affected more than just the middle class. Poor and working-class girls generally did not go to private physicians in the nineteenth century, but in the mid-1850s, the mother of a seventeen-year-old girl contacted Dr. John Tompkins Walton because her daughter was having a "fit." In his discussion of this case in the American Journal of Medical Science, Walton described what he saw when he came to Catherine's house: her face was disfigured and her body contorted by a "peculiar and revolting paroxysm," marked by a "lascivious leer" and an "insanity of lust."

Walton feared that as the only male present, he was contributing to Catherine's agitation; he proceeded to calm the girl by mesmerizing (hypnotizing) her. Then, borrowing from a technique he remembered described in medical school—farm wives who had difficulty getting their laying hens to give up their eggs would plunge the chickens' posteriors in cold water—Walton forced Catherine to sit in a tub filled directly from the tap. Quieted, Catherine was able to submit to his examination. He concluded that she was suffering from nymphomania because her attacks of ungovernable sexual excitement always occurred when she was alone or with lewd acquaintances.

In what appeared to be a contradiction of his initial statement, Walton commented that a lay person would see in Catherine an "ingenuous countenance" and "pleasing deportment." But because of his professional training, he claimed that he was able to see beyond these superficial observations to the primary cause of her affliction. Catherine's well-proportioned body and her "animal organization"—small, drooping eyes, large, broad nose and chin, thick lips—were the keys to her overdeveloped sensuality, and ultimately to her nymphomania. Reading Dr. Walton's reading of Catherine, we can see how contemporary racial and class theories influenced him. He "saw" Catherine's face and body in the categories available to him: pseudo-scientific theories that claimed those physical features revealed her character. According to these theories, proof of the primitive races' and the lower classes' licentiousness could be found in the shape of their lips, the look on their faces.

Looking for additional signs of Catherine's character, Dr. Walton determined that she was not a virgin, based on the "flaccidity of the nymphae" (the inner lips of the vagina) and the "distension of the vagina." The extreme sensitiveness of Catherine's clitoris proved to the physician that she was addicted to masturbation as well. At first he found her unwilling to confess to him, but under his unrelenting cross-examination, Catherine admitted that she was "a wanton" and that her appetite for masturbation was "insatiable."

Dr. Walton deplored the corrupting effects of Catherine's environment: she lived in a house with several families, shared a water closet with the whole courtyard, and associated with the young men lounging about the place. Some contemporary physicians would have recognized these conditions as signs of poverty, not moral failing. They believed that social and environmental factors contributed to disease—whether cholera or nymphomania—and advocated solutions such as cleaning up the slums. Dr. Walton did not share those reformers' sentiments.

Walton tried various medical remedies: inserting cool water into the vagina, putting leeches on the perineum (the area between the anus and the vaginal opening) to draw off the excess blood, and placing caustics on the vagina's mucous membrane, which was supposed to lessen its sensitiveness. In addition, the physician enlisted both her mother and her mother's clergyman to try to correct Catherine's moral "lesions." He entreated her mother to watch Catherine at all times. She diligently followed his orders; Catherine complained that her mother watched her so closely "as to prevent sexual fruition save at rare intervals." With typical Victorian moralistic fervor, Walton entreated Catherine to obey his strict regimen or else face the terror of an early and horrible death.

Catherine apparently rejected the physician's advice and was soon intercepted "in coitu," which presumably meant sexual intercourse. Outspoken and assertive over the months of treatment, she repeatedly denounced Walton for having destroyed her "virility." Because of the seriousness of her "insanity of venereal desire," Dr. Walton says he "rendered her emasculate" for a time (although he did not describe his method). He continued to control her "with threats of exposure on the one part, if she destroyed my work, and, on the other, promised to render her sexually fit to assume the duties of a wife whenever such services were needed." After six months of treatment, Walton claimed that "though she now occasionally experiences a slight venereal orgasm," Catherine was no longer inclined to resume her old habits.

These two cases—Mrs. B. and Catherine—reveal striking similarities. Even though Mrs. B. is married, middle class, and seeks medical help, and Catherine is working class, unmarried, and struggles mightily against medical interference, both cases define female sexuality as diseased. Nymphomania in Mrs. B.'s case consists of lascivious dreams, overwhelming sexual desire, and fear of losing control; in Catherine's case, nymphomania involves masturbation, and sexual intercourse—presumably with the young men in the courtyard. Physical causes are assigned in both cases, but nymphomania is still interpreted as a moral issue: inappropriate, problematic, out-of-control female sexuality, which requires watching, restricting, and taming.

Full article:
Nymphomania
A History
By CAROL GRONEMAN
W. W. Norton & Company

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