An improvement in the mode of administering the vapour bath, and in the apparatus connected with it; with plans of fixed and portable baths for hospitals and private houses, and some practical suggestions on the efficacy of vapour, in application to various diseases of the human frame, and as may be beneficial to the veterinary branch of medecine [sic].

Date:: 1809

Credit: An improvement in the mode of administering the vapour bath, and in the apparatus connected with it; with plans of fixed and portable baths for hospitals and private houses, and some practical suggestions on the efficacy of vapour, in application to various diseases of the human frame, and as may be beneficial to the veterinary branch of medecine [sic]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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% [ 20 ] him this tendency to local fulness in the head, I ordered cupping, and an opening medicine. By paying due attention to the fullness in the head, and keeping the bowels properly open, the pulse became regular; while the active etfects of the vital air so invigorated his constitution, that he not only lost his fits, but in six weeks gradually regained his vision and hearing, and As^as able to walk six or seven miles a day, with- out fatigue, or any inconvenience whatever. Some sultry Aveather coming on in the month of May, he became nervous ; had the head ach, and some slight degree of fever, after a fatiguing AA^alk to Hampstead; and for the second time only experienced a trifling relapse. I noAV directed him to be bled Avith leeches on the temples, and to take the usual dose of open- ing medicine: after Avhich, as soon as the fcA^er had subsided, he was to have recourse to the bark and vital air, at different intervals, until the middle of July. He then became perfectly aa'^cII in health, strength, and spirits; and in December, 1797, his father engaged him as clerk to hlessrs. Hopkins and Lincoln, in Barbican, Avhere he noAV resides; and not having had any return Avhatever of his former complaints, he is fully • enabled to keep such accounts, as require a mind perfectly free from every degree of oppression or irritation. Obseroations on the preceding Case. Hoavever the general appearance of this yonng man may have been as to strength, some peculiarity of habit, as irritability of stomach and bowels, most likely had existed, and was a predisposing cause of the com- plaint. Be this as it may, any sudden surprise or misfortune Avill almost always produce some determination of blood to the head, more or less violent, in the strongest frame. In this case, as in many others, it laid the foundation of very serious mischief. In length of time it exhausted the nervous energy; and the poAvers of life, depending on an equable circulation, Avere reduced to extreme debility. Under these circum- stances, no remedy, one short instance excepted, arrested the progress of the

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