Specification of Charles Whitlaw : administering medicine by the agency of steam or vapour.

  • Whitlaw, Charles.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Specification of Charles Whitlaw : administering medicine by the agency of steam or vapour. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Whitlaw s Impts. in Administering Medicine by the Agency of Steam or Vapour, furnished with a lid and false bottom, the sides, lid, and false bottom being perforated with small holes ; the steam or vapour is admitted into the lower part of this vessel below the false bottom, either through the pipe j, which passes through the side of the basis 0, as shewn at T* in Fig. 17, or else 5 through the side branch U of the three-wayed cock, as shewn in Fig. 16; the steam then rises through the holes in the false bottom of the vessel i and acts upon the vegetables, with which the upper part of that vessel is previously filled, so as to separate and exalt their volatile parts, and which, blended with the steam or vapour, rise up through the holes made in the sides and cover of 10 the vessel i and diffuse themselves throughout the interior of the tent. I can employ steam of greater or lesser temperature and pressure by loading the safety valve II of the boiler more or less, and I can concentrate or regulate its action upon the vegetables by putting them into vessels of greater or lesser size, and provided with more or fewer holes, or by making those holes of 15 greater or lesser sizes ; the smaller the vessel, and the smaller and fewer the holes in it, the more is the power of the steam concentrated upon the vegetables, and vice versa. I can also obtain a similar result by making the perforated cover of the vessel i cylindrical and moveable, so as to rise or fall, and I load it with more or less weight according to the pressure of the steam required. 20 This cylindrical part of the cover is either accurately fitted, by grinding or otherwise, within an external cylinder having no holes in it, or else it may be made to rise and fall in a circular channel, made by forming the sides of the external cylinder double, as shewn in Figs. 24 and 25, and filling or partly filling that channel with water or water impregnated with common salt. 25 i, Fig. 26, is the cylindrical, perforated, and moveable part of the vessel, loaded with weights at Jc, and which weights have holes in their centres, which retain them in their places upon the wire stem Z, which is affixed upon the top of the part i. The place of the perforated vessel i within the basis 0 is shewn in Figs. 15 and 16, it resting upon the two feet underneath it. When I wish 30 to supply two baths from one steam boiler I cause the steam to pass through a forked or branched pipe, similar to that shewn in Fig. 13. Having thus described the mode of preparing the vegetables forming my medicaments, the construction of the steam boiler, and the manner of directing the steam or vapour immediately upon the prepared vegetables, and also the 35 construction of my improved tent or vapour bath, I shall next proceed to observe, that this improved method of exhibiting vegetables as medicine, by applying the volatile parts of them through the agency of steam or* vapour to the whole external surface of the body, and causing them to be inhaled at the same time by the lungs, and thus received into the circulation, produces bene^