: The production leans into the history of "pelvic massages," a treatment performed by doctors or midwives to induce what was then called a "hysterical paroxysm" (now known as an orgasm ) to relieve patient symptoms.
For Anna, a woman who secretly spent her nights reading radical pamphlets and dreaming of the burgeoning suffrage movement, this was a prison sentence masked as a prescription. However, the "lifestyle" of a patient under Hegre’s care had a peculiar, performative quality. Every afternoon, she was wheeled into the garden to be seen by the local elite—a living advertisement for the doctor’s "gentle" methods. hegre 23 10 03 anna l treatment of female hyste hot