The Shocking History of Electric Corsets

The late nineteenth century was a time of scientific development when the reading public was introduced to new ideas and discovery through the media, including medical applications of electricity. This proliferation of knowledge was exploited by snake oil salesmen, charlatans who duped unsuspecting consumers with promises of miracle cures using the latest in scientific discoveries. It was also a time when corsets were worn by most women in Western countries and an age when dress reformers spoke out against the perceived dangers of corsets and the potential illnesses they caused. These three phenomena—corsets, electricity, and scam medicine—converged in the production of electric corsets as a guaranteed panacea for all the illnesses of the modern woman. Advertisements produced by the manufacturers, George Scott and Cornelius Harness, relied heavily on scientific language used to dupe the consumer, who held scientists and doctors in high regard. This chapter is a discussion of the treatment of women’s bodies by doctors in this period as being chronically ill and the enterprising charlatans who sought to profit from this by using science in marketing.