Devices and therapies
The Benefits of Phrenology
In honour of UK Census Day, here’s one way in which phrenology proved of great help in 1891: Source: The Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle, 11 April 1891 . .
Read MoreYou Needn’t be Bald
Source: Popular Mechanics December 1909 When a bald fellow had got fed up with rubbing lotions on his scalp or taking bullocks’ blood supplements, it was time to go for something more drastic – a vacuum cap. An early form of this device was invented in New York in 1898 by Claude O. Rosell. The cap, which […]
Read MoreDr A Wilford Hall’s Hygienic Treatment
From the Pittsburgh Dispatch, 2 Jan 1890 Alexander Wilford Hall wasn’t trying to flog a potion or contraption. His secret to health and longevity was something that people could do for themselves, for their whole lives, at very low cost. That is, if they really had the stomach for it. On sending in a stamp, […]
Read MoreThe Invisible Elevators for Short People
From The Standard (London) 10 April 1897 . Perhaps this is not strictly medical, but I noticed this ad while researching something else, and was intrigued enough to find out more. The invisible elevators, I discovered, were cork wedges about 1 inch thick, designed to be worn inside your shoes. The image below is of […]
Read MoreSomething to show and scare the people
TAPE WORM Removed ALIVE IN TWO HOURS with HEAD or no charge. (No Fee in Advance.) No fasting. Have cured over 2,000 people of Tape worms with this harmless infallible specific, 50 per cent of which were doctoring for various other diseases, thereby eking out a miserable existence as thousands are doing. (Also cured two […]
Read More‘Like a half-felled cow’ – a case of arsenic poisoning in Victorian Scotland
When you’re under the weather and you Google your symptoms in an attempt to convince yourself that you are about to die, spare a thought for Jean Landess, whose perusal of Chambers’s Encyclopaedia was the beginning of a tragic chain of events. In May 1868, 39-year-old Mrs Landess, of Paisley, had just weaned her youngest […]
Read MoreA miraculous change right away quick
Last October I blogged about the Magic Foot Drafts, a remedy for rheumatism that required the patient to stick pine-tar-coated oilcloth plasters to the soles of their feet. This was supposed to draw out uric acid through the pores, but as Samuel Hopkins Adams said in The Great American Fraud, …they might as well be […]
Read MoreDr Walter’s Medicated Rubber Garments
My Scottish grandma could be rather forthright at times and was wont to sum up the appearance of passers-by with the succinct phrase ‘She’s no stranger to a fish supper.’ Had grandma been around in the early 20th century, however, perhaps she wouldn’t have had as much opportunity to make this pronouncement. Help was at […]
Read MoreThe Lambert Snyder Health Vibrator
Unlike the La Vida Electric Vibrator, this one was hand-operated. Snyder explained its action in his patent application as follows: In a general sense my present invention comprises a main staff and a vibrator-head, the latter mounted for movement longitudinally on the staff in such manner that said movement will give a series of shocks to […]
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