2/19/12: Zap!

Yesterday, rummaging around in our attic, I found a thick, dusty reproduction Sears, Roebuck 1900 Consumers Guide. A few pages really gobsmacked me.

First, a quick sliver of background info.
Richard Sears, born in 1863 in Minnesota, worked in his teens as stationmaster for the railroad. One day, while he was selling tickets, a local jeweler padded out to the station, inspected, then refused a shipment of watches; the shipper offered them on consignment to Sears. Hmmm. Why not? He sold them easily. And ordered more. They went, too, snicker-snack. Aha! Electrified by the possibilities, he quit his job and set up a full time mail-order watch business. It was a success. But, watches broke. He needed a repairman. A guy named Alvah Curtis Roebuck answered his ad. Their business grew. Thousands of other items were added. And so was born a giant, still thriving industry.

1900 was an interesting time. Most folks lived in a rural environment, with no easy way to get supplies. Sears, with his fifty-cent yearly catalogue in 1900, had, in just three years, expanded into a business where nearly anything could be ordered at reasonable prices. For example, the gorgeous Acme Regal Steel Range, for coal or wood, sold for $21.30. It would go for thousands, today. The catalogue’s 1100-plus pages were crammed with detailed photographs and clever sales pitches.

Testimonials reassured customers of the merits of the more, ah, esoteric items.

One offering galvanized me.

I stumbled upon The Heidelberg Giant Electric Belt, equipped with an 80-gauge alternating current. If a man wore it for a few hours each day, in just one week this marvelous belt, which

…is really magical in its power, will cure any case, no matter how obstinate… It’s perfect in its relief of the peculiar diseases of men, driving out impotence, circulating blood into the seminal glands, enlivening them into a healthy glow. In most cases of sexual weakness the full power of this belt is required, but a cure is certain. It cures indiscretions. It restores joy. Throw physic to the dogs. Strengthen and cure yourself at once.

The attachable front electrode cured diseases of the stomach, liver and kidneys, and restored ‘ruined, deranged nervous systems.’ If doctors failed a man, this belt was The Answer. A man could discreetly wear it under his clothes, and be constantly zapped at the intensity level of his choice.

Women would also benefit. The dangly, designed-for-men electrode attachment in front, called ‘the electric sack suspensory,’ could be disconnected and replaced with the stomach electrode thingy. She’d be -

…cured of brain collapse, or forms of elementary insanity, nervous and sexual exhaustion not too severe or of long standing. It should cure headache, indigestion, pains in the back, and any stomach ailment, immediately. Even cancer of the stomach has been known to be arrested, to yield to and be cured by the wearing of a genuine Heidelberg Electric Belt.

It would be mailed in a plain brown parcel, with a ten-day money-back guarantee. Prices began at $4.00 for the twenty-gauge AC belt, and soared to a shocking $18.00 (a small fortune, then) for the 80-gauge model.

Ladies did flirt with ‘elementary insanity;’ they’d caught the fashion bug. The Sears catalogue showed the latest Paris look. Some shoes, for example, ended in super-long, lethal-looking points. Waists were cinched from an early age, to present the desirable ‘hour-glass’ shape. This must have been agony. Organs were gradually displaced, affecting childbirth, and breathing. Wire bustles dangling off their behinds, and bust-cages in front enhanced the look, and the discomfort. Check out the photo below. Wasp waists were aptly named: ‘ideal women’ mimicked insects. Never mind: electricity, the new marvel, could surely shock outraged bodies into accepting fashions’ necessary demands.

Truthfully, even 112 years later, that belt still radiates power: just reading about it gave me quite a jolt!








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