tomy, the number of ills that were supposedly
relieved by cupping was enormous. Thomas Mapleson, a professional cupper,
gave the following list of "diseases in which cupping is generally
employed with advantage" in 1801:

Apoplexy, angina pectoris, asthma, spitting blood, bruises, cough,
catarrh, consumption, contusion, convulsions, cramps, diseases of the
hip and knee joints, deafness, delirium, dropsy, epilepsy,
erysipelas, eruptions, giddiness, gout, whooping cough,
hydrocephalus, head ache, inflammation of the lungs, intoxication,
lethargy, lunacy, lumbago, measles, numbness of the limbs,
obstructions, ophthalmia, pleurisy, palsy, defective perspiration,
peripneumony, rheumatism, to procure rest, sciatica, shortness of
breath, sore throat, pains of the side and chest.[90]

_Early Cupping Instruments_

Mapleson believed that cupping was first suggested by the ancient practice
of sucking blood from poisoned wounds. In any case, the earliest cupping
instruments were hollowed horns or gourds with a small hole at the top by
which the cupper could suck out the blood from scarifications previously
made by a knife. The Arabs called these small vessels "pumpkins" to
indicate that they were frequently applied to a part of the body in which
the organs contained air or that they were vessels that had to be
evacuated before they could be applied.[91] The use of cattle horns for
cupping purposes seems to have been prevalent in all periods up to the
present. When Prosper Alpinus visited Egypt in the sixteenth century, he
found the Egyptians using horns that were provided with a small valve of
sheepskin to be maintained in place by the cupper's tongue and serving to
prevent the intake of air once the cup was exhausted.[92]

In nineteenth-century America, at least one physician still recommended
horns as superior to glass cups for rural medical practice. A Virginia
physician, Dr. W. A. Gillespie, disturbed by the high cost of cupping
instruments, suggested to his readers in _The Boston Medical and Surgical
Journal_ for 1834 that since glass cups were often broken when carried
from place to place, "an excellent substitute can be made of a small cow
horn, cornicula, which may be scraped or polished until perfectly
diaphanous or transparent."[93]

The Smithsonian collection contains a cow's horn from Madaoua, Niger
Republic (West Africa), used for drawing blood in the 1960s. The direct