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Figure 16.—Advertisement for phlebotomy and cupping instruments. Note the rubber cups. (From George Tiemann & Co., American Armamentarium Chirurgicum, New York, 1889. SI photo 76-13542.)

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]).