Bloodletting Instruments in the National Museum of History and TechnologyDavis, Audrey B.
History
Bloodletting Instruments in the National Museum of History and Technology
Davis, Audrey B.
National Museum of History and Technology; Phlebotomy -- History; Phlebotomy -- Instruments -- Catalogs
After 1860, interest in inventing new scarificators declined as wet
cupping decreased in popularity. The improved cups and scarificators,
while they had achieved a limited success, had still failed to supplant
the common octagonal scarificator and the plain glass cup. As interest in
wet cupping declined, medical attention shifted to the therapeutic virtues
of dry cupping. Dry cupping offered even greater opportunities for
inventors, who sought means to bring the effects of the vacuum to more
areas of the body for greater lengths of time.
_Dry Cupping_
Dry cupping, in its simplest form, was said to act as a "revulsive" or
"derivant." By the nineteenth century these once hotly debated terms had
become nearly interchangeable in discussions of cupping. In cupping for
revulsive purposes, one cupped on a distant part to relieve excess of
blood in the affected part. In applying cupping as a "derivant," one
cupped closer to the affected part. In either case, the source of pain was
presumed to be somewhere below the skin, and the pain was relieved by
bringing blood away from the affected part to the surface of the body.
Thus, one nineteenth-century cupper concluded, revulsion was only
derivation at a distant point.[153]
If dry cupping was applied for ten minutes or longer so that the
capillaries burst, the action of the cups was said to be that of a
counter-irritant. According to ancient medical theory, the
counter-irritant was a means of relieving an affected part by deliberately
setting up a secondary inflammation or a running sore in another part.
Counter-irritations were traditionally produced in a number of ways, among
them, blisters, cautery, setons, moxa, and dry cupping.[154]
One of the most popular counter-irritation devices commonly associated
with cupping instruments in catalogs of surgical goods, was Baunscheidt's
_Lebenswecker_, sold by most American surgical supply houses in the second
half of the nineteenth century. The _Lebenswecker_, or "Awakener of Life,"
was the mainstay of the mystical medical system known as
_Baunscheidtismus_, after the founder of the device, Carl Baunscheidt of
Prussia (1809-1860).[155] The system apparently gained much notoriety in
Germany, England, and America, for Baunscheidt's book went through ten
German editions and several British and American editions. At least two
Americans patented improvements on the _Lebenswecker_.[156] The device was
made of ebony, about 250 mm long, and contained a coiled spring attached
to a handle. At the other end of the spring was a place about 20 mm in
diameter, with about thirty projecting needles. By pushing upon the
handle, one sent the needles into the skin. The ability of the instrument
to create blisters was enhanced by the application of Baunscheidt's
special oil to the irritation (Figure 17).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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