Advertisement for 'Harness' Electropathic Belts'

The Electropathic and Zander Institute, founded by Cornelius Bennett Harness in 1885, offered electricity based therapies and was based above the Medical Battery Company's showrooms at 52 Oxford Street, London, both of which are illustrated towards the foot of the advert.
Electricity was something new and strange to the general public at the time, and was seized upon in many ways for commercial and therapeutic purposes. Harness' Electropathic Belts were supposed to generate 'new life and vigor ... for weak men, for delicate women' as well as cure 'nervousness, debility, sleeplessness, rheumatism, sciatica, lumbago, torpid liver, organic weakness and kindred ailments' but actually produced no sensation whatsoever (despite testimonies from Dr Herbert Tibbits and Dr Arthur Harries on the reverse). They were supposed to be charged by being plugged into a device incorporating a magnet. A combination of disreputable retail practices and the fact that their electropathic belts did not work, increasingly embroiled the Company in litigation until a compulsory winding-up order was handed to them in 1894.