Fig. 105.—Lamp for local fumigation.
The patient, in four or five minutes, usually breaks into a violent perspiration, his pulse quickens much, sometimes even syncope occurs; hence, he should not be left alone until the bath is over. This, if the flame is strong and the quantity of calomel not very great—one or two scruples being a common dose—occupies a quarter of an hour. When the bath is over the patient should at once get into bed, and lie there a few hours; then he may rise and be well sponged with tepid water. Moderate but tolerably speedy mercurialisation of the system is thus induced.
Local Fumigation is employed when the disease is confined to a few obstinate patches of eruption. For this purpose an earthenware alembic (fig. 105) is fitted to the lamp used for general fumigation; the calomel is thrown into the bottom of the alembic. The flame plays over the outside, and heating it, sublimes the calomel; which reaches the mouth of the alembic and condenses on any part to which it is applied.
The throat may be fumigated by inhaling the vapour as it escapes from this alembic, or by sucking air through the spout of an earthenware teapot in which the calomel has been placed, and heated by a spirit lamp underneath.
The Hot Air-Bath is easily obtained by undressing the patient, putting him to bed on a mattress, and fastening across the bed two or three lengths of cane or stout wire, over which a blanket is next thrown. The patient’s body is thus enclosed in a small chamber, the air of which is then heated by putting inside, on an earthenware plate, a spirit lamp, surrounded by a kitchen lemon-grater to protect the bed clothes from its flame. Sheets should be dispensed with while the lamp is alight, lest they catch fire. The temperature of the air should be watched, lest it grow hot enough to scorch, but it must be kept up till the patient breaks into a sharp perspiration, when the lamp may be removed and the patient allowed to cool slowly down.
The action of the bath is greatly accelerated by sponging the patient all over as he lies in bed with tepid water, when the air grows warm.
Lamps protected with wire gauze, and furnished with a cradle to keep the bed clothes up, are sold at the instrument-makers, but the above arrangement answers just as well as more elaborate apparatus.
The Vapour Bath.—The patient is put to bed as in the hot-air bath, and a few feet of vulcanised india-rubber tubing, fastened to the spout of a tea-kettle on the fire, bring a supply of vapour into the bed.
The vapour bath may precede the hot-air bath, and will quicken the action of the latter very greatly.
