The Electric Corset

The Quack Doctor has a short article (and accompanying podcast) about Harness's Electric Corset of the 1890s. It was apparently a ripoff of Dr. Scott's Electric Corset, a similarly useless device. 

The electric corset was alleged to cure back pain and improve the appearance of the "chest," as it was so Victorianly put. 

"They are the best corsets I ever wore, aside from their electric qualities, which are truly marvelous," quotes one advertisement testimonial for the Dr. Scott edition.

Though the term may conjure amusing images of women deliberately wiring themselves into primitive electrical contraptions meant to periodically shock them, the "electric" corset actually seems to have been more of a magnetic corset, featuring a magnetized busk, and possibly some magnetized coils inserted into pockets. Still, about the time these were invented, similar jokes were already spreading, like this report from an 1891 edition of The Electrical Engineer: 

Paris, says the Scientific American, is laughing over a joke about an American inventor who is said to have patented an electric corset, calculated to bring about the reign of mortality at once. If one of these articles is pressed by a lover's arm it emits a shriek like a railway whistle. The inventor claims to have already married off three of his daughters to their too backward lovers by the publicity thus thrust upon them!