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| - The photo was part of a set of late 19th century magic lantern (slide projector) images depicting staged scenes from "The Unlucky Present," a Scottish tale about a blacksmith rescuing a minister with a cooking pot stuck on his head.
For years, a rumor has swirled online about a black-and-white photo showing a hammer-wielding man standing next to someone leaning over an anvil with their head encased in a metal pot. According to the claim, the photo dated to 1895 and showed an authentic historical treatment for headaches.
Variations of the rumor appeared on X (archived) and Reddit (archived), and some (archived) posts claimed (archived) the unpleasant-looking procedure was called "vibration therapy."
As Snopes found when we first looked into the picture in 2021, it does not depict any medical treatment, much less vibration therapy — the name of an authentic, late 19th century medical treatment for headaches that consisted of gently running a brush or electric vibrator over a patient's scalp.
The question of what the photo actually depicts went unanswered in 2021, when we speculated that it might originate from a "humorous postcard or an advertisement."
However, another look at evidence revealed a more concrete explanation for the strange picture. As it turns out, it's a late 19th century magic lantern (slide projector) slide depicting a staged scene from a humorous Scottish tale published in various anthologies, newspapers and magazines in the 19th and early 20th centuries, typically under the title "The Unlucky Present."
According to that story, a poor widow once gave her cast iron cooking pot to a minister who had admired it while visiting her. On the walk home, the minister struggled with the pot's weight and so he rested the pot on his head like a helmet — an accommodation that worked well until the minister realized it was stuck and he was at risk of suffocation. The panicked minister managed to make his way to a local blacksmith, who had the minister lay his head on an anvil and used a hammer to shatter the pot, safely freeing the minister.
The photo investigated here depicts the blacksmith about to free the minister from the pot and is part of a seven-slide set illustrating the story.
Both the individual slide (archived) and the full set (archived) can be seen on the Lucerna Magic Lantern Web Resource, a nonprofit website maintained by a group of researchers and collectors interested in magic lanterns. Magic lanterns were early image projectors, first developed in the 1650s and used for popular entertainment between the 18th and early 20th centuries.
The exact date of the magic lantern slide depicting the in-question scene is unknown. It was likely taken in the 1870s — when its creator, the British photographer Alfred Pumphrey, began using photographs of live models for his magic lantern slides, according to a 2018 article by magic lantern researcher Richard Crangle — or the succeeding years before Pumphrey's death in 1894.
In summary, the picture of a hammer-wielding man and someone kneeling with a pot on their head is a staged scene from a series of magic lantern slides. It does not depict any sort of medical treatment, much less "vibration therapy" to cure headaches.
— Snopes archives contributed to this report.
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