VIRUS Band 19, pp. 155-180, 2021/06/10
Schwerpunkt: Objekte als Quellen der Medizingeschichte
Electrotherapeutic devices can be found in numerous medical and technical history collectionsand are still offered almost every month by private donors. These objects, which developedinto a social fashion article in the 1920s, open the view to a specific cultural-historical context.Against the background of a “crisis in medicine”, alternative healing methods and technologiesof self-treatment had experienced an increasing demand during the Weimar Republic. Thesemedical machines can be described as profoundly ambivalent objects: promising self-empowermenton the one hand, incorporating the actually criticised “mechanization of medical treatment”on the other hand. Being symbols of the electrified urban society, the devices also becamelifestyle accessories of a bourgeois entertainment culture. This article is devoted to the contradictoryrole of electrical healing devices as part of a specific material culture and particularlydeals with different practices of appropriation.
Keywords: Electro Therapy, Material Culture, Consumer Culture, Self Medication, Lebensreform, Weimar Republic, 20th Century, Quack Medicine, Violet Ray, Stimulation Current, Popular Science, Popularisation, Entertainment Culture
