Devices and therapies

Bailey's Light Spinal Stays and Invisible Crutches

Source: The Era (London) Sunday 23 October 1853 Bailey was a respectable supplier of “every description of Anatomical, Dissecting, Amputating and Post-Mortem instruments” as well as trusses, support stockings, ear trumpets, railway conveniences (male and female), water beds and chest expanders. His adverts appeared in distinguished publications such as the Lancet as well as in […]

Atkinson's Registered Rectum Supporter

The pic is a bit small so I’ve transcribed the text anyway, but you can probably get the idea how this contraption was worn. The white circular bit in the centre of the picture was a smooth piece of ivory designed to fit where the sun don’t shine. The inventor, Benjamin Atkinson, manufactured a variety of surgical mechanisms, such […]

Dr Ball's Ivory Eye Cups

This device, invented by Dr Ball of Nassau Street, New York, was a small cup with a squeezy rubber balloon attached to it, as pictured left. The invention made its way to England in 1872, when Chichester minister Joseph Fletcher filed a British patent for it. The patient had to put the cup over the eye and […]

Dr Scott's Aperitive Vase

The Aperitive Vase, a cure for constipation, is somewhat coyly advertised here, but adverts from earlier in the 1840s left less to the imagination: The apparatus is a fountain in miniature, so small that when filled it may be concealed in the pocket until it can be used conveniently; when, by an hydraulic double-action within it, the […]

Compound-Magnetic Bands and Pads

The Jevons brothers capitalised on the Victorian fashion for electro-magnetism with a range of products – including the “Goliath Belt,” the “Chest Strengthener” and the “Spinal Reviver” that could be worn discreetly under the clothing. One of their adverts described the terrible state of a person deficient in the vital or magnetic force: …the poor dyspeptic, […]