Description:
Domed-shaped glass cupping cup with straight sides and a rolled rim. Cupping has been a part of western medicine since the time of Hippocrates and practiced in may other areas of the world. Cupping was generally regarded as an anxillary to venesection, with a tendency to prefer cupping in cases of local pain or inflammation or if the patient was too young, old or weak to withstand a phlebotomy. The ancients usually recommended cupping close the the point of disease; however they also recommended cupping a different area to divert blood such as Hippocrates recommendation to cupping the breasts to reduce excessive menstral flow. Cupping and leeching was less frequently practiced in the medieval period, although general bloodletting continued to be popular. Cupping came back into favor in the late 18th and early 19th centuries when a number of professional cuppers practiced in Europe and America. In 1801, London cupper Thomas Mapleson gave a long list of "diseases in which cupping is genrally employed with advantage" including apoplexy, angina pectoric, asthma, spitting blood, bruises, convulsions, consumpsion, diseases of the hips and knee joints, deafness, lumbago, measles, gout, whooping cough, etc. Medical authors have long distinguished between dry and wet cupping. In dry cupping, in which no blood is removed, a heated cup was applied to skin, the causing the skin to swell as the air cooled creating negative pressure and blood was drawn to the surface. In wet cupping, dry cupping was followed by making several incisions in the skin and a reapplication of the cups to draw out blood. Prior to the introduction of the scarificator, the cupper severed the capillaries by making a series of parallel incisions with a lancet, fleam or other surgical knife. These glass cups, which came in a range of sizes, had a thick rim so that the cups would be less painful when applied and removed.
Tags:
medicine Link to share this object record:
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