Cupping was the process of putting a match inside of an open-ended globe to burn all the oxygen out of it and then placing the cup upon a body part. As the cup cooled, a vacuum was created Cupping Glasses Various types and sizes of Cupping Glasses, Table 1 in Exercitationes Practicae Circa Medend Methodum by Frederici Dekkers drawing the bad humors to the surface of the skin. It was called dry cupping when used upon regular skin and wet cupping if incisions were made before the cup was placed. (Wet cupping encouraged blood from the incisions.) French surgeon Pierre Dionis and sea surgeon John Woodall both recommended cupping for wounds of the eyes.1 Your first thought might be that the eyes were somehow cupped, which sounds like a pretty grisly operation. Fortunately this is not the case; period surgeons believed that the humors that affected the eyes run through the back of the neck. The noted 12th century Arabic surgeon Albucasis gives us the proper procedure for cupping in the case of eye troubles. Like Galen and Hippocrates, Albucasis was thought to be one of the Ancients - surgeons whose works were so well regarded that they were still taught during the golden age of piracy. The effect of cupping the nape of the neck is to help in heaviness of the head and in a fluxion of humours into the eyes; but it should be done after a complete evacuation [purging upwards and downwards] of the body. This use of cupping make take the place of venesection of the cephalic vein [bleeding using a vein in the arm.]2 1 Pierre Dionis, A course of chirurgical operations: demonstrated in the royal garden at Paris. 2nd ed., p. 472 & John Woodall, the surgions mate, p. 136; 2 M.S.Spink and G.L. Lewis, Albucasis On Surgery and Instruments; A Definitive Edition of the Arabic Text with English Translation and Commentary, p. 658
Posted on: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 13:00:01 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015