Alternative Therapies

中文

Exhibited items

  • Kawai Kyōhei (author)
    Japan, nd
    Ding Fubao (translator)
    China, 1874–1952

    Western Massage Textbook, 1906 (Japanese edition)
    西洋按摩术讲义,1910 (Chinese edition)
    Shanghai: Wenming shuju

    Gift of Dr Dorothy Chong and family, 1994
    Rare East Asian Collection, Archives and Special Collections

    Ding Fubao was a bibliographer and medical practitioner with knowledge of both Western and Chinese medicine. He translated and published many medical books in the early Republican period, introducing Western medicine to Chinese readers. This book belongs to a set of books that he published with Wenming shuju in Shanghai. The original book was in Japanese and contained many illustrations; this Chinese translation keeps the original illustrations and typesetting of each page.

  • Nancy Lloyd-Green
    Australia, nd

    Notes taken in the first year of Diploma of Massage course, 1929
    Paper, ink, cardboard and metal

    Gift of Mrs Wendy Alexander, 2005
    Medical History Museum, University of Melbourne

  • Buckleys (UVRAL) Ltd.
    United Kingdom, est.1926

    High-frequency (‘violet ray’) apparatus, “D-Type”, c. 1920
    Glass, metal, bakelite

    Gift of the School of Physiotherapy, La Trobe University, 2002
    Medical History Museum, University of Melbourne

    Powered by a mains electricity supply, this apparatus applied high-frequency electrical sparks to the body using glass vacuum electrodes. Known as ‘violet ray treatment’, the purple, red, or blue electric sparks were believed to relieve rheumatic pain along with other aches in muscles and internal organs by massaging the surface of the skin with an electrode. This was a highly popular home treatment in the first half of the twentieth century in the West.