f
hyperemia, meaning "excess of blood." According to the doctrine, lesions
are always accompanied in nature by hyperemia, "the most widespread of
auto-curative agents."[162] If we, therefore, wish to imitate nature, we
create an artificial hyperemia. Bier recommended several means of
increasing the blood supply of an affected part, including hot-air baths,
suction devices such as Junod's boot, and dry cupping. Several American
surgical suppliers sold Bier's Hyperemic Cups in the early twentieth
century. These were glass cups, of a great variety of shapes and sizes
including some with curved rims, each fitted with a rubber tube and bulb
for exhausting the air. A major function of these cups was to collect
wound secretions from boils or furuncles.[163]

[Illustration: FIGURE 18.--Junod's boot applied to a baby in the cradle.
(From Victor Theodore Junod, _A Theoretical and Practical Treatise on
Maemespasia_. London, 1879. Photo courtesy of NLM.)]

_Breast Cupping_

Related to cupping by its technology is the practice of drawing milk from
the breasts by means of breast pumps. Mothers with underdeveloped or
inflamed breasts posed a frequent problem for the nineteenth-century
physician, who treated them with either large doses of tartar emetic, a
strong purgative, or with cupping.[164] Breast pumps were small glass cups
with fluted edges made to accommodate the nipple. While some surgeons, as
the American Samuel Gross, recommended using a bottle with a long neck in
which the air had been rarified by means of hot water,[165] most breast
pumps were exhausted by mechanical means. For reasons of modesty, the
pumps were usually designed so that the woman could draw her breasts
herself. Perhaps the simplest design of a breast pump was a glass cup
having a long spout extending in such a way that the woman could perform
suction herself. Such all-glass cups were illustrated in the eighteenth
century.[166] A few, reputedly made centuries earlier, are found in the
Wellcome Historical Medical Museum. Early in the nineteenth century,
breast pumps, just as glass cups for bleeding, were attached to brass
syringes, and were often included among the variety of cups in cupping
sets provided with syringes. Read's and Weiss's patent syringe as well as
Thomas Machell's cupping device were adapted for breast pumping. With the
invention of vulcanized rubber, the breast pump was frequently attached to
a large rubber bulb. A glass protuberance