"What could possibly go wrong?": Inventions from the nasty past

Call these "un-ventions". Things the inventor should have thought twice about. Things that might even be hazardous to your health and wellness (and wellbeing and stuff).

How many of these all-purpose-douche-and-enema machines did they sell, anyway? And you could wash the dog with it, too. Come to think of it, that's not such a bad deal. But boy would you ever need to clean the contraption between uses.

Hmmmmmm. That "word of warning" tells the whole story here, as does the "dual purpose" bit. I think these things are designed for ease of access, and I don't mean for taking a tinkle. And do you know what, I would NOT want to get caught in my zipper while wearing one of these.

This thing, this evil metal nose clamp, is supposed to prevent pain from hay fever, "catarrh", etc.? What the fuck IS catarrh? Is this something the human race used to get, but just doesn't get any more, or does it just no longer exist? Perhaps, like quinsy, lumbago and grippe, it simply went out of style. But hey. . . maybe that means that this contraption actually worked!

I'll try not to comment on the name of the inventor.

This is another evil thing you stuck on your face. I don't think this cured catarrh, or cat-gut-guitar or whatever, just "analyzed facial flaws" - and if the contraption is any indication, this poor woman is ALL flaws. The guy is obviously a sadist: this thing has 325 screws in it that can be tightened any way he wants.

A related issue is the Toilet Mask or (even more sinister-sounding) "face glove". I can't help but be reminded of This Is Spinal Tap's album, Smell the Glove. They still sell things that look sort of like this, things that strap on to a woman's face and make her look like Hannibal Lecter.

Hey, it's a new kind of hat, all right. A fake hat. A charlatan hat. A faux hat. A phony hat. A hat-that-doesn't-really-grow-hair. But if it didn't work, you could get a job as a chef in a robot factory.

I looked at this ad with great puzzlement, trying to figure out just what they meant by diseases of the head: mental illness, perhaps? Or was the inventor of the device perhaps thus afflicted? Then I read the description, and there it is. . . CATARRH! So catarrh, we've finally deduced, is a disease of the head. But you've got to get one of these to cure it, and unfortunately they stopped making them in 1932.

This is one of those marvelous Victorian orgasm-machines that I wish they still made. It beat the hell out of having your doctor shove his hand up your skirt, a common therapeutic treatment of the day. The ad even mentions hysteria, a catch-all term which basically meant "horny" (thus the need for one's doctor to feel one up and produce "paroxysm"). I think I'd rather have my paroxysms on a real horse, but if you don't have the space or the oats and hay, this might just do the trick. Whatever that is.

I don't understand this thing - looks like he has some sort of beehive on his head, or an underwater device, except that it's made out of felt. I've seen fabric cocoons that you can wrap around yourself, but this - is that a fire extinguisher or an oxygen tank sitting beside him? What are all those gizmos and egg-slicer thingies on his desk? I don't know if I want to get too deeply involved.

And your hair would smell just great!

This has the largest cringe-factor - no, wait. That one is coming next. But when you see the little naked baby under a sun lamp, you just die a little bit inside. If you want your kid to Stay Brown Th' Year Round, this is the way to go - until Child Protection finds out about it.

And I am truly sorry for this one, but I had to include it for the sake of historical accuracy. A long, long time ago I posted instructions for prostate massage, not because I was interested but because it read like a translation of a translation of some indecipherable foreign language (I won't say "tongue"), and thus was rendered virtually incomprehensible. This thing gives a whole new meaning to one of my favorite expressions, "Sit on this and rotate". It is obviously a dildo, one which needs to be well-lubricated for use: "Note especially those little vent holes in the nozzle through which the unguent inserted in the chamber below may be forced out by turning the knurled cap."

I cannot say another word about this.

"Why didn't this catch on??"

Why, why,why, you may ask yourselves,WHY didn't these brilliantly innovative inventions catch on? Why do we not see them today as we stroll down the street? Why must they be consigned to the dusty halls of Pinterest? It is difficult to imagine why the Turkey Wagon didn't catch on. Keeping two turkeys is so much cheaper than a pony, though their sense of direction might be erratic.

Are these sound amplification devices? Small strap-on mobile cannons? Some bizarre sort of plumbing system involving attaching people's heads together? Or merely a strange precursor to the Mickey Mouse Club?

The whole trouble with Pinterest and all those Top Ten Most Horrible sites is that they don't give you any background, and if they do it's either wrong or just a wild-ass guess. So I might as well make my own wild-ass guess and say this is a bottom-pincher which can stretch out to a full capacity of twelve miles. The figure operating it is a pervert.

The Isolator, The Isolator! I found so many pictures of The Isolator, and I still do not know what The Isolator is or might have been. Looks like something Michael Jackson might have used, or perhaps the end of a giant twinkie. A tank of some unknown gas, purported to be oxygen, rests on the desk.

This is beautiful, even though I do not understand it. I don't know if this was an experimental prototype, or if Isolators roamed the streets back in the 1920s.

This would, in fact, be very isolating. Small children might run screaming. I am trying to figure out what all those gizmos are on Hugo's desk. Perhaps they are merely props to make all this look terribly scientific and distract you from the fact that this headgear is bloody useless.

THE ISOLATOR!

This woman is encased in something called the Swimming Machine. She appears to be strapped or perhaps bolted in, while her girl friend cranks the crank that makes the something-or-other, the contraption, the Swimming Machine, force her arms and legs into gyrations approximating swimming. I like this, but I don't like to think what might happen when the tide comes in.

This is the precursor to those bloody videos where a dog is supposed to be eating dinner, and you know it's all faked because a dog NEVER does that with a fork and spoon. This dog seems to be holding a rifle.

That square thing at the top, first of all, has a face. Are you one of these people who sees faces in everything? It's a malevolent being with dials for eyes and a pressure-gauge for a nose, and like the gas meters of my childhood it terrifies me. The guy is boiling his feet off for reasons we don't know, or trying to keep busy or keep his hands off himself, and his feet off himself too. Victorians.

This is even better. It's the Schnee Bath, in which a man bathes his Schnee while two fetching nurses look on. The fact he needs two medical attendants while undergoing the Schnee Bath is alarming. Wires appear to be running from that ominous-looking box straight into the buckets of bath water. This guy's going to do a Thomas Merton any time, and they'll have to peel him off the ceiling.

People like to strap things on their head. You see it all the time. This thing looks like it could explode at any minute. It's a fire-extinguisher, actually, like in the horrible old Victorian school I went to, the one that had a sign on it that said DO NOT TOUCH. People were literal enough back then, and so afraid of authority, that if the entire school were in a conflagration, no one would have touched that fire extinguisher because it had a sign on it that said DO NOT TOUCH. And I would be dead and not writing this.

Look carefully at the blobby thing on top of the woman's head. It's the back view of an alien, with its long skinny arms and legs wrapped around her face. It is eating her brain, but she has not noticed it yet because she is high on the fumes from the fire extinguisher.

If I had to work at a typewriter again, I think I'd wear one of these so I could scream as loud as I could and no one would hear me. If things got really bad, I could mentally control the various weapons appending from the helmet. I could fire death-rays at someone. The long tube coming out of the fellow's mouth is a vacuum cleaner hose. He's having a conversation with his buddy in the next room. My brother and I used to do that all the time, and also roll marbles and send the hamster on a little journey.

This is trick photography. This thing actually sits on the ground and does nothing.

Who needs eyeballs, when you can have implants? These fit neatly in each eye socket and completely eliminate the use of the eye. Think they're not attractive? Guess again. Available in a variety of styles and colours, 

Ice cream wagon? No. Portable oven? Hmm. The woman is wearing a gas mask, and there's this little vent-ish looking thing - . No. There could not be a baby in there.

This is one of the more unfortunate artifacts from Nazi Germany, in which infants were indoctrinated with piped-in speeches by Adolf Hitler before they could crawl. The comely Fraulein is reading Mein Kampf, also adapted into a child's first reader (Fun with Adolf and Eva).

This is obviously something that turns, right? Turns around? In a circle? Then why is the guy's head plugged into it the way it is? His head would be wrapped around this thing in about two seconds and he would be ground up into hamburger by all those gears at the bottom.  A learning device designed by Hieronymus Bosch, probably meant to punish sinners.

"You had me at hello"

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA