Antique Victorian Hard Rubber Boxed Set of Ebonite Dilator Forms, c. 1890s-1910s

A curious boxed group of polished black hard rubber egg-shaped dialator forms, several pierced through, from a turn-of-the-century physician's estate. Molded vulcanite (ebonite) was the medical plastic of the Victorian era — impervious, boilable, and easily polished — and was used for dilators, pessary forms, instrument handles, and anatomical forms of every description. Sold as found, a strange and sculptural little group in the original paperboard tray. 

Manufacturers claimed that inserting these hard rubber or plastic "torpedo-like" instruments could cure chronic constipation, hemorrhoids (piles), and local rectal irritation

Makers also promoted them as treatments for unrelated systemic and mental health issues, including insanity, headaches, insomnia, acne, anemia, bad breath, nervousness, and fatigue. The underlying and discredited theory was that illnesses stemmed from "rectal constriction" or poor circulation in the lower bowels.