there is a reason it looks like pvc piping and couplings...

July 21, 2017 5:08 AM

In 2002, the Science Museum of Minnesota absorbed the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices when the curator's health failed. Many of them are still on display, but even those of us unlucky enough to live far from St. Paul can still tour the museum virtually. Come see the foot-powered breast enlarger! Feast your eyes on the Prostate Gland Warmer! Marvel at the Timely Warning! But whatever you do, perhaps don't sample the delights of the Shoe-fitting X-Ray or the Relaxacisor.
posted by sciatrix (30 comments total)

"Eddie, get off there!" she screamed. "Get off there! Those machines give you cancer! Get off there!"
posted by Wolfdog at 5:33 AM on July 21, 2017 [5 favorites]

In 2002, the Science Museum of Minnesota absorbed the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices when the curator's health failed.

Hopefully not because he used one of his exhibits.
posted by meronym at 5:33 AM on July 21, 2017 [4 favorites]

Is it wrong that I was charmed to see the prostate referred to as " The abdominal brain?"
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:51 AM on July 21, 2017 [7 favorites]

It's how I'm going to refer to it now.

When I come across old "health" device advertisements from mid-last century, I'm always charmed at the willful cultural denial on display. Those things couldn't more clearly broadcast THIS WILL GET YOU OFF BIG TIME, SERIOUSLY, RAM IT UP IN THERE AND YOU'LL HOLLER IN A GOOD WAY, YOU DIRTY LITTLE SO-AND-SO and yet I have zero doubts that some moustachioed gentleman reading that while puffing away on a Bing's Favorite looked up and said "Darling, says here I need to be concerned about my prostate health, I wonder if there's anything to that."
posted by middleclasstool at 6:07 AM on July 21, 2017 [11 favorites]

Years ago I worked with a guy who made the outlandish claim that shoe stores had X-ray machines and used them to see if your shoes fit correctly. We thought he was making it up.
posted by tommasz at 6:15 AM on July 21, 2017 [4 favorites]

The prostrate gland warmer has relieved a deep, internal, chillling sensation that I was the only one in the world who needed such a solution.
posted by vorpal bunny at 6:21 AM on July 21, 2017

Entertainingly unfortunate use of the verb "arouse" in the patent description of the Timely Warning.
posted by merlynkline at 6:25 AM on July 21, 2017

I visited the Museum back when it was on its own, and talked with Bob McCoy a while. He was quite pleasant and had some interesting anecdotes, especially about people trying to get him to let them use the orgone box and other orgone devices.
I got to try the "Psycograph", an automatic phrenology head-measuring device--a very mad-scientist looking chair with a cluster of metal prongs to measure the head. I still have the printout somewhere; apparently I have a very average head. That's one reason I'm sure it's quackery.
posted by librosegretti at 6:31 AM on July 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

Mrs. Example and I got to use the phrenology machine back in the 90s! (It was our first road trip together, and the one where I met her parents...no pressure.) I can't remember what it said about my head, but I seem to remember it at least being nothing alarming.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 7:01 AM on July 21, 2017

I remember trying to go there on my first trip to Minneapolis - unfortunately, that was in 2003, so they had just recently closed. Still, I love going to the science museum just for this exhibit. I didn't know about the virtual museum, though!
posted by dinty_moore at 7:04 AM on July 21, 2017

tommasz: afaik, the primary reason for the machines was to check to see that children's (!) shoes fit correctly. I remember Mom and the salesman looking through viewers on one side of the machine, while I looked through the viewer above the space for my feet, and wiggled my toes on command to demonstrate there was plenty of room to grow. This was at a Sears in Danville, IL, late 50s/early 60s. Doesn't seem to have caused any lasting damage—so far, anyway.

Also, I don't know what I would call a device that sends electric shocks through the body, but I'm very sure "Relaxacisor" would not make the short list.
posted by she's not there at 7:07 AM on July 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

I actually asked if I could donate to the Science Museum with the money earmarked specifically to expand this exhibit. I wasn't a big enough donor to get the attention of someone who could really answer that question, so it hasn't happened yet.

When I went to the Body Worlds travelling exhibit it exited through these displays and it was fun to watch the looks on people's faces who hadn't been to the museum but came for Body Worlds. Especially since some of them were still in shock from what they'd just seen in BW.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 7:14 AM on July 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

I had my feet x-rayed - mid-1950s at the Missoula Mercantile shoe store. When my mother and I got home and told my father (geologist who had multiple x-ray diffraction and and spectrograph setups in his lab) about it, he was mortified. Never got to do it again.
posted by skyscraper at 7:27 AM on July 21, 2017

The firmly believe the flouroscope is proof I was born in the wrong decade.. God knows how many things I would have liked to stick in there..
posted by Captain Chesapeake at 7:30 AM on July 21, 2017

Should you find yourself in St. Paul, the current exhibit is really great. They used to just have a selection of items off in a side gallery, but now it is a huge display with historical documents and purported mechanisms of activity and how to evaluate this type of miracle cure claim. It's like Oh No Ross and Carrie: Museum Edition. (I've been meaning to email them in case they are ever in town and want a field trip.)
posted by Flannery Culp at 7:42 AM on July 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

In his decision, Judge William P. Gray said the devices could cause miscarriages and could aggravate many pre-exisiting medical conditions, including hernia, ulcers, varicose veins and epilepsy.

I believe they could also cause your eyes to move disconjugately from each other.
posted by Segundus at 7:44 AM on July 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

The original museum was great- when my friend and I visited it 15+ years ago, McCoy showed us all the weird X-Files type photos people would be constantly faxing him.

The exhibit is fun, but it's unfortunate the Science Museum sanitized a lot of the stuff that was in the original museum...we can't have the kiddies looking at early 20th century vibrators, now can we?
posted by Esteemed Offendi at 8:15 AM on July 21, 2017

Your limbs and extremities are one of the most radiation resistant (radiation agnostic?) parts of your body, federal radiation guidelines are the most relaxed for anything that isn't "a major portion of the whole body". I'd say the real danger of these foot floroscopes was to the workers, who spent every workday in close proximity to a leaky source of ionizing radiation with no kind of dose monitoring.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 8:17 AM on July 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

I got to go to the museum in 1999 - it was so neat!

I had my head examined with the awesome phrenology machine. It said I'd be a good architect, and I said I was working to being a web designer, which was close. And then the woman working there and I had a great conversation about web design. Which was nice.

I am a little sad that it's a bit sanitised, but there was so much other neat stuff that, y'know, I'm just glad it's all out there.
posted by Katemonkey at 8:27 AM on July 21, 2017

we can't have the kiddies looking at early 20th century vibrators, now can we?

I miss that stuff too, but on balance, I think choosing items that are weird in a PG way to encourage an all-ages audience to learn how to distinguish real science and medicine from bullshit was a good move, especially in our current post-fact let's-allow-both-sides era.
posted by Flannery Culp at 8:30 AM on July 21, 2017

Oh yes, I remember getting my feet x-rayed to check the fit. We all thought it was really cool to see our toes wriggle. Now I wonder if it contributed to my getting plantar warts about ten years later, which they used x-ray of some type to kill. Hmmm. Never had any other problems with my feet, so probably not.
posted by MovableBookLady at 8:50 AM on July 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

...I think choosing items that are weird in a PG way to encourage an all-ages audience to learn how to distinguish real science and medicine from bullshit was a good move, especially in our current post-fact let's-allow-both-sides era...

It's better than nothing, but I was recently at OMSI where they have a great Pompeii exhibit going on. Of course part of what's interesting about Pompeii is the non-PG rated stuff, so the exhibit puts the more prurient items in an enclosed space with a sign warning that Thar Be Wieners Here (or something)...I liked that approach for balance.

It seems like over the decades, science museums have become more and more de facto children's museums, for good and for bad.
posted by Esteemed Offendi at 9:08 AM on July 21, 2017

From the Relaxacisor link:
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 1971
They were declared dangerous to health in a California court ruling last April against Relaxacisor, Inc., the distributor.

In 2003 I studied abroad for 6 months in Voronezh, Russia. Being a good student, I took every opportunity to work on my language skills, I watched tv in the evenings. There were a ton of weird gadgets advertised with those "As Seen On TV" sorts of commercials, but one that played frequently and that sticks in my memory was a machine with electrodes that you would hook up to your abs (or other muscles) and shock them into a six pack or a giant bicep. The advertisement was mostly just closeups of different body parts decorated with wires and spasming. I guess it was sort of like a TV version of those awful Taboola ads online.

There was a whole lot of that kind of stuff around then, and there wasn't any change in 2013 and 2014 when I've most recently been back. Saw plenty of miracle devices of that ilk when I lived in China a few years back too, advertised on TV or demonstrated in markets.
posted by msbrauer at 9:37 AM on July 21, 2017

We were at the original museum gasping at the case of radium-infused items when Bob McCoy snuck up behind us and boomed, "I SEE YOU'RE QUITE INTERESTED IN OUR RADIOACTIVE DILDO COLLECTION!" Everyone in the place whirled on us in shock and a gleeful McCoy launched into a fascinating discourse about the "energizing power of radium" and yes: the bizarre popularity of radioactive insertables. That museum was one of my favorites and I was so relieved to hear the Science Museum of Minnesota preserved the collection.

(I too got my head bumps read and have the printout around here somewhere. If I find it I'll update the thread with a picture.)
posted by eamondaly at 9:45 AM on July 21, 2017 [5 favorites]

Bob McCoy, who ran the museum, died in 2010. Here's his obituary from "The Humanist" magazine. He wasn't merely an amusing guy; the obit notes

"... McCoy never shied away from controversial issues. Before abortion became legal in 1973 he ran an underground abortion referral service, and after the passage of Roe v. Wade he was the director of Meadowbrook Women's Clinic, his state's first legal abortion clinic. "

He also appeared a few times on Letterman in the 1980s.
posted by amk at 10:15 AM on July 21, 2017 [10 favorites]

As a prostate haver, I am racking my brain and coming up blank on any time in my life I have had a cold prostate.
posted by Samizdata at 10:22 AM on July 21, 2017

They wouldn't have been able to market it as a prostate stimulator. "Warmer" sounds more wholesome and health-oriented while still being covertly suggestive enough. Anyone curious about stimulating said prostate would not be confused by that device's purpose. Everyone else would probably think "wow, these eggheads cook up some crazy stuff."
posted by middleclasstool at 10:40 AM on July 21, 2017

Metafilter: Wow, these eggheads cook up some crazy stuff.
posted by jenkinsEar at 12:19 PM on July 21, 2017

So when do Alex Jones and Gwyneth Paltrow get their own wing of the Questionable Museum? It really needs to dedicate some space to today's homicidal hoaxers.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:36 PM on July 21, 2017

For some inexplicable reason, the phrase "hot to trot" comes to mind.
posted by valkane at 3:05 AM on July 22, 2017