CHEST WRAPPER.
This consists of a jacket made something like a vest, reaching from the neck to a little below the navel. It should be made of double thicknesses of soft toweling. To protect the garments or bedding from moisture, it should be covered with another jacket made like it but a little larger. In applying it, the wrapper should be wet in tepid water, and should then be applied as snugly as consistent with the comfort of the wearer. It should be re-applied every two or three hours, as it becomes dry.
If properly managed, the chest wrapper is a valuable remedy; but it has been greatly abused. It should not be worn more than a week without intermission. The practice of some in continuing it until it produces an eruption of the skin, and even longer—to promote a discharge—under the idea that a vicarious elimination is thus performed, is highly reprehensible, and has no sound physiological principle to support it. Such treatment is damaging to the skin, and does the patient no good in any way. The better plan is to allow the wrapper to be worn during the night, but omitted during the daytime. If worn during the day, it should be changed often, and should be removed so soon as the patient becomes chilly. Whenever removed, the surface of the skin should be washed or sponged with cool or tepid water. Feeble patients with defective circulation should wear the wrapper only while walking or riding on horseback.
This appliance may be profitably employed in a large number of chronic diseases. In chronic bronchitis, pleurisy, pleurodynia, asthma, and the early stages of consumption, it gives relief.