This cupping set consists of a pump mechanism and four nested glass cups. There is also a small bottle, possibly for alcohol. Cupping was a treatment of great antiquity which involved attaching certain vessels, in this instance the cups, to the skin. The cups remained in place because a partial vacuum was produced inside them.

In this set the air-pump created the vacuum. This method of producing the vacuum replaced the earlier practice of warming the cups prior to application.

The purpose of cupping was to draw what was considered to be bad matter in the blood toward selected places in the body at the surface of the skin, away from vital organs.

Cupping could be practised either wet or dry. With the dry cupping process the skin was not broken before the cups were used but the local areas of the body affected became red and painful. However for wet cupping the skin was scored before the cups were applied.

The amount of blood extracted depended upon the number and depth of the incisions and the extent of the vacuum present in the vessel. Although the intention of dry cupping was not to extract blood but it could still draw fluid from the raised blisters which it caused.

This set does not contain a scarifier tool for making incisions in the skin but it may have been used for either wet or dry cupping.