Dalrymple's Treatment Of Hsteria In The Film Hysteria

The film Hysteria (Wexler, 2011) takes place in Victorian England when Hysteria was known to be a disorder caused by a women's overactive uterus. Dr. Dalrymple was an older man who owned a practice specifically to treat women of Hysteria. The treatment of hysteria was to realign the women's uterus, which is really just bringing women to orgasm. Dr. Dalrymple had two daughters in the film, whose names were Charlotte and Emily. Emily was very supportive of her father and studied pathology, while Charlotte believed hysteria to be a hoax. Her explanation for hysteria was that men simply did not know how to or not want to please their wife's in bed. Dr. Dalrymple hires a young man named Dr. Grandville to help him at his practice. He does very well and begins bringing in a lot of patients. This pleases Dr. Dalrymple, so he offers Dr. Grandville to be his partner, and pushes him to marry his daughter Emily so one day he can take the place over. All is well until Dr. Grandville begins to experience chronic hand spasms and cramps, which causes him to lose his job. While he was away from his job, his roommate Dr. Edmund, who is interested in technology, invented a muscle massager that was originally a feather duster. They use the muscle massager to "realign" the uterus of a maid named Molly, who was previously a prostitute. After their discovery, Dr. Dalrymple gave Dr.Grandville back his job and business was better than ever, which also mean the …show more content…
The diagnosis is not only being used to control women but is also causing drastic consequences if it is ordained untreatable. Women are forced to insane asylums and are also forced to have a hysterectomy, which almost happened to charlotte in the film (Wexler, 2011). Also, because of this misdiagnosis women were lead to believe that there was something wrong with them when in fact, they were perfectly