Vapour baths may be made by putting boiling water in a pan, and placing a cane-bottom chair in the pan, the patient sitting upon it, enveloped from head to foot in a blanket covering the bath. Sulphur, spirit, medicinal, herbal, and other baths may be obtained in the same manner. They should not be taken except under medical advice.
2452. Vapour Bath at Home
Another equally easy but far more effectual method of procuring a vapour bath at home is to attach one end of a piece of gutta-percha tubing to the snout of a kettle on the fire, and to introduce the other end below the chair, on which the person who requires the bath is sitting, enveloped in a blanket as described above.
2453. Hot Water
In bruises, hot water is the most efficacious, both by means of insertion and fomentation, in removing pain, and totally preventing discoloration and stiffness. It has the same effect after a blow. It should be applied as quickly as possible, and as hot as it can be borne. The efficacy of hot water in preventing the ill effects of fatigue is too well-known to require notice.
2454. Thinning the Blood
It is desirable to consider the means of thinning the blood, when it has been deprived, by too profuse transpiration in hot, dry winds, of its aqueous particles, and rendered thick and viscid. Water would easily supply this want of fluidity if it were capable of mingling with the blood when in this state; acid matter cannot be ultimately combined with the blood when the body is in this state. In order to find a menstruum by which water may be rendered capable of combining ultimately with the blood, of remaining long in combination with it, and of thinning it, we must mix it with a substance possessing the property of a soap, and consequently fit to dissolve viscous matters, and make them unite with water.