Nerve-Vibration and Excitation

While it's true that Joseph Mortimer Granville invented the electric vibrator, he never intended it to be a sexual device but rather a way to relieve more mundane muscle aches. Originally called a percusser, or more colloquially, "Granville's hammer," it was manufactured and sold to physicians. When it became increasingly popular, Granville tried to disassociate himself from the device's "mis-use." In this 1883 book on the subject, Granville argues, "I have never yet percussed a female patient. I have avoided, and shall continue to avoid the treatment of women by percussion, simply because I do not wish to be hoodwinked, and help to mislead others, by the vagaries of the hysterical state." Read more about "nerve-vibration" therapy by the physician who was, despite his attempt to distance himself from his own invention, the gatekeeper of women's sexual pleasure.