AEROTHERAPEUTICS. In addition to the general use of open air and sunshine, there are several particular ways of using air for therapeutic purposes. Thus oxygen enriched air is used for those made ill through breathing irritant gases such as were used in warfare. These gases evoke oedema of the lungs and danger of suffocation through want of oxygen. So, too, in cases of pneu monia, shock and failing circulation, oxygen inhalation is useful. It is administered either by a mask or in a special chamber in which the patient is put. In the latter case great precaution must be taken against the danger of fire.
Oxygen containing 5% of carbon dioxide provokes deep breath ing, and is useful in cases when the lungs require expanding, as after operations for empyema, when hypostatic congestion of the lungs threatens, and in cases of poisoning by carbon monoxide, as in ordinary coal-gas poisoning, etc. This mixture is particularly useful for breathing during induction of and after anaesthesia with ether, since the deep respiration induces anaesthesia quickly, and washes the ether out of the body at the end of the anaesthetic period. The breathing of nitrous oxide and oxygen in a com pressed air chamber at half an atmosphere extra pressure gives deep and safe anaesthesia.
Certain dusts in the air act as irritants to those affected with hay fever and asthma, e.g., the pollen of plants, spores of aspergillus mould. It has been found possible to relieve such patients by send ing them to the high Alps.
In a mercurial or sulphur bath, the patient, enveloped in a sheet, sits on a chair beneath which a lamp is placed both to volatilize the drug and produce a steamy atmosphere. The vapour is ab sorbed by the skin. This treatment is used for syphilis and also for scabies and other affections of the skin. (See THERAPEUTICS.) Air at a low pressure is used locally for cupping and thus producing local congestion, the blood being drawn into the part to which the cupping apparatus is applied at the expense of other organs. A similar result is got by local application of heat, poultices, etc. In operations where the chest cavity is opened air is blown into the lungs through a tube introduced through the larynx in order to keep the lungs distended.