atly exaggerated the
virtues of the remedy.[97] Another French surgeon, Rene de Garengeot,
argued in 1725 that those who resorted to such outdated remedies as
cupping had studied the philosophical systems of the ancients more than
they had practiced medicine. He accused the admirers of the ancients of
wishing to kill patients "with the pompous apparatus of wet cupping."[98]
(Figure 10.)

[Illustration: FIGURE 9.--Persian spouted cupping glass, 12th century.
(NMHT 224478 [M-8037]; SI photo 73-4215.)]

Nineteenth-century cuppers tended to blame the baths for the low status of
cupping among surgeons. Dionis had described the baths in Germany as great
vaulted halls with benches on two sides, one side for men and the other
for women. Members of both sexes, nude except for a piece of linen around
the waist, sat in the steamy room and were cupped, if they so desired, by
the bath attendants. The customers' vanity was satisfied by making the
scarifications (which left scars) in the form of hearts, love-knots, and
monograms.[99] Mapleson's complaint against the baths in 1813 was typical
of the reaction of the nineteenth-century professional cupper:

The custom which appears to have become prevalent of resorting to
these Bagnios, or Haumaums, to be bathed and cupped, appears to have
superseded the practice of this operation by the regular surgeons.
Falling into the hands of mere hirelings, who practiced without
knowledge, and without any other principle than one merely mercenary,
the operation appears to have fallen into contempt, to have been
neglected by Physicians, because patients had recourse to it without
previous advice, and disparaged by regular Surgeons, because, being
performed by others, it diminished the profits of their
profession.[100]

[Illustration: FIGURE 10.--Cupping in the bath, 16th century. (From a
woodcut held by the Bibliotheque Nationale. Photo courtesy of NLM.)]

After a period of neglect, cupping enjoyed renewed popularity in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In that period a number of
professional cuppers practiced in the cities of Europe and America. Both
Guy's and Westminster Hospitals in London employed a professional cupper
to aid physicians and surgeons. Of these hospital cuppers, at least four,
Thomas Mapleson, Samuel Bayfield, George Frederick Knox, and Monson Hills
published treatises on the art of cupping, from which