A practical compendium of the diseases of the skin, including a particular consideration of the more frequent and intractable forms of these affections; with cases / By Jonathan Green.

  • Jonathan Green
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical compendium of the diseases of the skin, including a particular consideration of the more frequent and intractable forms of these affections; with cases / By Jonathan Green. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    26/264 page 14
    strata of hot air immediately in contact with the body are success¬ ively robbed of their excess of heat, by the conversion of the watery products of perspiration into vapour, in which the caloric that was sensible, and that tended to raise the temperature of the body, immediately becomes latent. There is consequently no means of cooling a hot air bath, say of 120°, down to its own tem¬ perature 98°, so effectual as the immersion within it of a living human body, and this is the reason that the temperature falls so rapidly in ill-constructed baths, and that it has to be kept up so in¬ cessantly even in those of the best construction. After the perspiration has appeared about five or six minutes on the forehead, the full effect of the bath has been obtained, and the patient should immediately quit the apparatus. If the stimulus be continued longer, it is at the expense of the agreeable feelings first induced; a degree of languor and exhaustion succeeds to these, and patients then feel drowsy and disposed to sleep. But if the bath be quitted when the effects are at their height, a comfortable degree of warmth is experienced for some hours afterwards, and the activity of the body and the elasticity of the mind, far from being diminished, are on the contrary very much increased. It sometimes happens that the skin is in so dry and unperspirable a state, that a moderate degree of heat in the bath fails to induce sen¬ sible perspiration, and then, if the temperature be allowed to rise rapidly, patients complain of an unpleasant scorching sensation. In these cases, a little watery vapour let into (he bath by an appa¬ ratus contrived for the purpose, gives immediate relief, and very speedily induces the state of surface we are desirous of obtaining. The effects of a remedial agent of this power, it may be conceived, require to be closely watched, as its use in the first in¬ stance in diseased conditions of the system ought to be cautiously undertaken; and here I would most earnestly urge on my profess¬ ional brethren the necessity of their superintending in person the effects of, at all evepts, the first few baths they may think it advisable to prescribe: medicine is an experimental art at best, and it is impossible to predict with certainty a 'priori what the precise effects of any remedial measure may be. From my particular position, I am enabled to speak with some authority on this point, and that which I make an invariable rule of doing myself, I may surely be excused for wishing to exact of the profession at large. Powerful therapeutic agents as are the simple hot air and vapour bath in themselves, their activity is susceptible of being further increased, and their powers adapted to particular cases, by impreg¬ nating them with certain substances, which, under the influence of heat, arise in the state of vapour or fumes. Of these the most important, in a general point of view, is sulphur. This is now administered by a process of sublimation; the mineral is not set fire to and burned, as used formerly to be don0,7and as is still prac¬ tised in imperfectly constructed fumigating apparatuses, by which the patient is enveloped in an atmosphere of sulphurous acid gas, and runs considerable risk of being stifled each time he adventures
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3