RenuLife “Violet Ray” Machine
1975.19.1 - Gift of Curtis Vinum
Every object tells a story. One of the most rewarding aspects of curation is discovering new information. Data and context help give inanimate objects a voice. And when they speak, it is about more than just themselves. Historic objects provide windows into another time that can often seem like another world.
When we first encountered this artifact in the collection, we asked ourselves what on earth it could be. The name implies that it was “medical” in nature. Patent dates indicated that it was manufactured sometime after 1919 and the overall style and materials suggested not too long after that patent date.
This gadget is a “violet ray” medical appliance, once advertised to cure a multitude of ills by applying a high voltage, high frequency, low current to the human body, and by producing ozone for direct inhalation. These devices were designed to be used in medical settings and at home by the consumer.
The properties of electricity have long been used in medicine and quasi medicine. Think about Dr. Frankenstein animating his monster using electrical current. Even before electricity’s properties were understood and long before Michael Faraday invented the first electric motor in 1821, electric shock treatments were available. Ancient writers, such as Rome’s Pliny the Elder attested to the numbing effects of electric catfish and rays. In AD 46, Scribonius Larhus wrote his Compositiones Medicae, recommending that patients stand on a live black torpedo fish to relieve gout and other pain. To do this, they waded out into shallow water in the ocean and stood on the fish! Presumably without its permission.
So, it is no wonder that when electricity became commercially available in the late 19th century, there was a proliferation of remedies based on its properties. By the turn of the 20th century, the vast majority – some say more than 90% – of physician’s offices in large U.S. cities, such as New York City, had electrical treatment devices on hand.
Unfortunately, violet ray machines were not miracle cures and there were numerous lawsuits filed in the 1940s and 1950s against various manufacturers for false advertising.
Electricity does have a place in modern medicine – aside from simply powering machines. Today, we have TENS machines to relieve pain, AED machines to restore heart rhythm, pacemakers to keep that rhythm, and Deep Brain Stimulation to relieve the symptoms of neurological diseases. Violet ray machines still exist as well, but they have been put under the beauty industry where they are not regulated by the FDA.