Joseph Mortimer Granville

Joseph Mortimer Granville (4 May 1833, Devonport – 23 November 1900, London) was an English doctor, author and inventor.

Biography

Grandville qualified M.R.C.S.Eng. in 1856 and L.R.C.P.Lond. in 1861. He attained the higher medical degree M.D. in 1876 from the University of St Andrews.[1]

In his earlier years he was much engaged in journalism, and was, we believe, a frequent contributor to the editorial columns of the Lancet. He practised at one time in Bristol, but afterwards settled in London, and gave particular attention to the treatment of gout, upon which he wrote largely.[1]

In addition to his famous invention of an electric vibrator, he also invented a sphygmograph and a differential thermometer.[1]

On 1 December 1858 he married Mary Ellen Ormerud in Bristol.

Electric vibrator

In the late 1880s Granville invented the electric vibrator, a handheld electric operated device designed to relieve more muscle aches and pains. Originally called a percusser or more colloquially "Granville's hammer", the machine was manufactured and sold to physicians, many of whom used the equipment to create "hysterical paroxysm" in their patients with female hysteria.

As vibrators began to be used for bringing hysterical women to paroxysm, its inventor tried to disassociate himself from the device's "mis-use". In his 1883 book on his research, Nerve-Vibration and Excitation as Agents in the Treatment of Functional Disorder and Organic Disease, he wrote, "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 ..."[2]

Granville was portrayed by actor Hugh Dancy in the 2011 film Hysteria.

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References
  1. "Obituary. J. Mortimer Granville". British Medical Journal. 2 (2083): 1619. December 1, 1900.
  2. Granville, J. M. (1883) Nerve-Vibration and Excitation as Agents in the Treatment of Functional Disorder and Organic Disease. London: Churchill. p. 57.
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