Cupping head
A cupping head is an old medical term. It comes from Middle High German (mhd.) Schrafen, schrepfen “scratch, let your vein” and mhd. Head “bowl, drinking vessel, brainshell”. The cupping head or the cupping glass (Latin ventosa , Middle High German vintuse ) is a small, spherical glass vessel that is used as an aid to create a vacuum during cupping . The diameter is 3 to 8 cm.
It has an opening with a rounded edge, often also bent back flat outwards. This avoids painful pressure of the edge on the skin and achieves a good seal.
One design also has an attached glass tube through which the air can be pumped out with the help of an attached rubber bellows.
Cupping heads were already known in Roman antiquity under the name Cucurbitula and were often depicted as a symbol of doctors.
There were two types of cupping heads
- bronze cupping heads in mushroom shape, in which Scharpie was burned to create the negative pressure . There are archaeological finds here.
- Cupping heads made of horn ( horn ) or other material, in which the vacuum was created by sucking out the air through a small hole, which was then closed with wax. These have only been handed down in writing.
literature
- Gerhard Bachmann and Friedrich Pecker: The cupping treatment. Saulgau 1952.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Thomas Gleinser: Anna von Diesbach's Bernese 'Pharmacopoeia' in the Erlacher version of Daniel von Werdts (1658), Part II: Glossary. (Medical dissertation Würzburg), now with Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1989 (= Würzburg medical-historical research. Volume 46), p. 153.