You’ve heard of cupping, right?

“Gosh,” you may be thinking, “I am not feeling great, but I don’t trust doctors. How can I cure what ails me in the dumbest way possible? Also, can we mix in some mild body horror?”

Well friend, do I have the alternative health fad for you! It’s called cupping!

The idea is that you apply suction to the body. One way to do this is to put a cup on a person’s skin and remove air from the cup. The vacuum sucks the person’s skin up into the cup, causing bruising. And… health?

But that’s just pedestrian, vanilla, toddler-grade cupping. You can also get wet cupping, where the cupper cuts you first so that you bleed into the cup. There is also fire cupping, where they drop a bit of alcohol-soaked trash into the cup before putting it on your skin to create the vacuum.

Now to be clear, cupping is not a new thing. It has been practiced for centuries, by cultures all around the world.

To also be clear, it’s garbage. But that hasn’t stopped people from coming up with ways to cup more and harder! For example, consider the “Therapeutic suction cup”: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20180339090A1

I’m not entirely sure why they have those cords (28) pulling on the suction cups. Paragraph 21 says, “The cords 28 may be attached to a fixed object, such as a therapy cage, and tension may be applied to the cord 28 which pulls the handle 12.” Friends, I am not sure what a “therapy cage” is, and I am afraid to google it, because it sounds like some kink thing and I’m at work.

But what if that isn’t potent enough? Perhaps you would be interested in the “Device for sucking body and methods thereof”: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20040106907A1

This one never got issued as a patent. Maybe because everyone who has put their hand over the end of a vacuum has experienced prior art?

This second one goes into great detail on a proposed therapeutic effect, of draining the “ichors/sanies” from a breast. I’ll spare you the details, but it was kind of gross. But being kind of gross is par for the course for cupping!