(This is completely untrue, by the way) --the account was based on a poorly-researched, semi-fictional non-fiction book about the history of women's health which was, otherwise quite decent. I can't remember the author's name, but the account of "physicians stimulating hysterical women" doesn't turn up in medical history, and was later shown to be a false account. She walked this back with "Well, I took some liberties to tell a story and didn't expect everything to be taken as fact." Or something like that....
Anyway, this account became one of those things that was "bizarrely true enough" to grab popular attention and is now widely accepted as truth. Like anti-vaccine nonsense, you just need to convince enough humans about something that they want to believe, and no retraction will change their minds after they have tuned their brains to "what is true." There was even a recent movie made about it. ...but this never happened.
...It's like Marco Polo. That guy ever existed!