THE 
f! 
VETERINARIAN. 
VOL. XVI, No. 181.] JANUARY 1843. [New Series, No. 13. 
VAPOUR-BATH FOR HORSES. 
PRACTITIONERS of veterinary medicine for years past have 
envied surgeons the advantages they derived in their practice 
from warm and vapour baths, and attempts have been most 
laudably made by some of our more enterprising members to 
supply this desideratum in veterinary therapeutics : obstacles, 
however, of a formidable character have stood in their way, 
which, until the present day, by no one have altogether ever been 
surmounted. The object sought after being a warm water bath, 
there was to be taken into consideration, first, the space required 
for the bath and the copper, not to be found in all horse-infirmaries 
in crowded towns ; secondly, the cost of these of the large dimen- 
sions required ; thirdly, the continual expense of fuel ; fourthly, 
the difficulty that might present itself of enticing the horse to 
enter the bath, for any compulsory measures to do so would in 
many cases counteract all the benefit derivable from the bathing. 
At the horse infirmary at Woolwich, many years ago, the writer 
of this remembers, it was proposed that a bathing place should 
be constructed for the patients : the estimated expense, however, 
of putting the project into execution was such as to deter even 
those who had advocated in strong terms its probable utility, from 
recommending its adoption to the Honourable Board of Ordnance : 
•the affair in consequence fell to the ground. 
The various ways in which steam has been made applicable as 
a warm bath for man, induced one, now no more, but whose 
memory is, and long will remain, dear to us all — the late Mr. 
John Field — to turn his mind to the subject; and so late as 
about four years ago some experiments were made in Mr. Field’s 
infirmary, in which Mr. Read, the well-known ingenious in- 
ventor of the stomach-pump, &c., &c., assisted, and took a great 
deal of interest. The means, however, the experimenters took to 
generate steam proved inadequate, affording a very insufficient 
supply of steam ; and their mode of conveying it into the recep- 
tacle, intended as a bath, in which the horse was placed, turned 
VOL. xvi. a 
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