Dr. Young's Ideal Rectal Dilators

Dr. Young's Ideal Rectal Dilators were medical devices sold in the United States from the late nineteenth century until at least the 1940s, part of the burgeoning market for patent and proprietary medicines and devices at the time. They came in sets of four "torpedolike"  hard rubber (later, plastic) instruments varying in diameter from 1⁄2 inch (12.7 mm) to 1 inch (25.4 mm) and in length from 3 to 4 inches (76.2 to 101.6 mm), and according to a retrospective article in The American Journal of Gastroenterology, were no different from modern rectal dilators.