Quotes From The Past: The Telephone Station
“The medical journals have an important part to play in the education of the doctors upon this subject [the clitoris], and will they not, for humanity’s sake, give the matter the attention which it has so long deserved, but failed to receive?”
Dr. Pratt 1897
A strong start in advocating for the education of doctors, and all people, about the clitoris. Where he took it next though, humanity would have been better off without his advocacy.
In 1897 Dr. Pratt wrote in a medical journal of how doctors discovered “the importance of the clitoris as a telephone station in the nervous organization of women.” He came to this conclusion by the results of an experiment unknowingly done on women already anesthetized for another procedure. To be clear, this had already been studied and written about, which makes the experiment I’m going to share even more heinous. Not only was it quite obviously unnecessary for medical research, but it was sexual assault.
He describes “an assistant holding the labia minora apart” while a fountain syringe gives a stream of water with “considerable force” upon her body. First he sprayed the anus where he noted that some women reacted to this by contracting and some had no reaction. Then he tested the labia majora and the labia minora, but they were found unresponsive to the pressure. Then he found something he thought was incredible. “But now direct the stream of water against the end of the clitoris, and especially up under the hood, and almost invariably there will be a convulsive contraction of the anus, of the urethra, and of the entire body of the patient. Although sufficiently anesthetized for ordinary operative purposes, the patient will be thrown more or less thoroughly into a convulsive state.”