Imagination Gone Mad
By Peter LloydThere's a museum in Minneapolis dedicated to good ideas gone bad. It's called the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices. It's founder, Robert McCoy, a professional skeptic, has collected 150 examples of medical devices that do absolutely nothing. Let's take a quick tour with McCoy as our guide.
"The first thing you'd see would be a Phrenology Machine. You would sit in a chair that's part of the machine, and it would come down over your head with a lot of little switches and measure the bumps on your head and translate that information to a printer that has 160 statements on a rubber belt that prints out what your personality's like.
"Another thing you'd see was Wilhelm's Reich's original Orgone Energy Accumulator. So you sat in this place that looks like a fish house or an outhouse, close the door, and after 15 minutes, after you came out, you would have a healthy normal orgasm, which would be appropriate for integrated living.Before you wonder how anyone could get away with promoting such hocus pocus, consider McCoy's list of current scams.
"Right now are diet patches. Things in which you take a band-aid and put it on your wrist and put a drop of chemical on it, it's supposed to make you lose weight. Things such as copper bracelets or crystals that cure cancer or AIDS. Such things as magnetic belts with magnets that are supposed to make you lose weight and strengthen your heart."
How do we tell the difference between a medical scam and a legitimate medical wonder? How do we keep from letting your own ideas to get out of hand?
That's the subject of my next Right Brain Workout, "Testing the Waters."
Meanwhile, here are a dozen more Bizarre Devices from Medicine's Dark Past.