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Glow with health using violet rays (1920 ish, through to 1960's)
(thelemmy.club)
Another quack cure from the early / mid 1900's. You can find them still in antique markets. It seems to be a UV light wand. UV light is harmful to eyes and can be carcinogenic, causing skin cancers. There are a few skin conditions that spot UV is used to treat today, but most of this ad is harmful quackery!
The ailments the wand claims to cure:
- Asthma
- Boils
- Blackheads
- Catarrh
- Colds
- Eczema
- Failing Hair
- Hayfever
- Headaches
- Insomnia
- Lumbago
- Nervousness
- Neuralgia
- Paralysis
- Pimples
- Rheumatism
- Skin Diseases
- Sore Throat
- Other ailments
Those indoor tanners we have today are not great for people either! It's a tradeoff, it gives a tan, but also skin damage and premature aging.
They aren't, but I don't think they claim medical benefits either. It's purely aesthetics.
You are on a roll with these ads, each post is more conversation-stimulating than the last.
Haha thanks. The late 1800's and early 1900's is so fascinating to me. In some ways it's all very familiar, it's not like the year 700 where we can't even understand the language. But at the same time, so much of it feels just... weird.
I have an interest in the early post-Roman era in Western Europe and sometimes, when I'm reading monastic records (translated), I get a physical rush, because we are them and they are us. Middle English is not so difficult to understand in context, I mean, if you know you're reading a householder's account book, for example, you can piece it together and get a rush. It was an age of faith and the beginning of soaring structures, like basilicas that the ordinary people put their whole hearts into with every stone.
IKWYM about that kinda rush. I've read some very old things from 2-3500 BCE, translated into English of course from Sumerian or whatever original. It's weird, in a good way, to read the words of somebody who's been dead for multiple millennia. Like you said, we are them and they are us. You can see the worst of us and the best of us, in the worst of them and the best of them.