The electric vibrator was invented in the late 19th century as a medical instrument for pain relief and the treatment of various ailments; one account gives its first use at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris in 1878, with Romain Vigouroux cited as the inventor. English physician and inventor Joseph Mortimer Granville, who also developed an early model, asserted his own priority in the invention and has been described as the 'father of the modern electromechanical vibrator'. Mortimer Granville's 1883 book "Nerve-vibration and excitation as agents in the treatment of functional disorder and organic disease" describes the intended use of his vibrator for purposes including pain relief and the treatment of neuralgia, neurasthenia, morbid irritability, indigestion and constipation. These early vibrators became popular among the medical profession and were used for treating a wide variety of ailments in women and men including hysteria, arthritis, constipation, amenorrhea, inflammations, and tumors; some wounded World War I soldiers received vibrotherapy as treatment at English and French hospitals in Serbia.