Bleeding, Cupping, Vomiting and Pooping

Remember, these procedures were all done to release illness from within the body and to balance the humours.




The cupping procedure:

The cups were boiled in hot water, and hot water was applied to the area to be cupped.  This would usually be behind the ears, on the temples, or on the scalp, but could also be near the site of an infection.  "The cupping vessel was placed on the body, and a wick from a burner placed under the glass for a second or two.  As the burner used up or 'exhausted' the air in the glass the skin beneath the cupping glass rose slowly into the glass, until one third of its space was filled.  The cup was left in place for one minute, while the scarificator was warmed.  The glass was removed and before the 'tumefaction' subsided the scarificator was used to cut the skin, until the blood flowed profusely.  18 or 20 ounces of blood was often taken using 4 or 5 cups."  (Display #1832 at The Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garret Museum, London. Source: "Samuel Bayfield's book on cupping," viewed 15 October 2012.)  Cupping set from the museum below:

Ned Ward was cupped for a shoulder injury and he described it like this:

"Upon this the operator fetched in his instruments and fixed three glasses to my back, which, by drawing out the air, stuck to me as close as a Cantharidid plaster to the head of a lunatic till I thought they would have crept into me, and have come out t'other side.  When, by virtue of this hocus-pocus strategem, he had conjured all the evil blood out of my body under his glass juggling cups, he plucks out an ill-favoured instrument and begins to scarify my skin, as a cook does a loin of pork to be roasted, but with such ease and dexterity that I could have suffered him to have pinked me all over full of eyelet holes had my malady required."  (Waller, 97.)  Scarificator instruments from the museum:

People expected to have something dramatic and immediate to happen when they were treated.  They bled, or released pus, or vomited or had several stools.  Medical treatment was expected to make someone feel sick.  You will meet the Josselin family tomorrow, but their father records in his diary that two of the children were given physick (he implies they were healthy at the time), and they "were sick even to death, so that our hearts trembled, fearing the issue, but the [L]ord in mercy to us quickly blew it over, and they revived and are now well." (Beier, Lucinda. "In sickness and in health: A seventeenth century family's experience" in Porter, Roy.  Patients and Practitioners: Lay Perceptions of Medicine in Pre-industrial Society (London: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 119-20.)

 

Obviously, with no knowledge of instrument sterilization, hand washing, dehydration, or even a method to evaluate what was happening internally, you can see the cure could be worse than the original problem.  We know now that each of these methods probably weakened the already ill person, and it was amazing people recovered and survived medical care at all.

P.S.  Just for your next topic at a party:  Mortar and pestles (the bowl and the pounder thingy) have been used for centuries, but the guy who invented the porcelain ones we are familiar with was Josiah Wedgwood (creator and producer of Wedgwood China)!  In 1780, Wedgwood noticed that when acidic herbs and materials were crushed in metal bowls they reacted with the metal, so he manufactured porcelain ones at his factory to keep pulverized mixtures pure("Mortar and Pestle" display at Old Operating Theatre) .