DR NELSON’s Steam Inhaler 500ML,AvonGreen Wellness Soother for Vocal Cords, Headaches Relief and a Nasal, Sinus Decongestant – Excellent for Treating Chest Infections and Pains, Flu, Colds and Coughs

Product Information

We celebrate the history and contemporary creativity of the world’s oldest living culture and pay respect to Elders — past, present and future.

A rare photo of the Alfred Hospital operating theatre 1907, at that time instruments were boiled in water and soda and most receptacles were enamel ware, rubber gloves were not introduced until 1908. Alfred student nurses always wore arm bands to identify their level of seniority. This specific style was used from 1950-1992.Brown, pressed cardboard laundry case, no handle, catches at both ends, and protective covers on each corner of the base and lid. The efficiency of the improved Nelson's inhaler is demonstrated by the ongoing use of the item since 1865. This simple inhaler is suitable for use in homes and hospitals. Figure 2 : The original presentation of Dr Nelson's Inhaler in The Lancet in 1865 https://dx.doi.org/10.15180/170807/004 In use the water should be almost boiling and the Inhaler not more than half filled. When infusions are required the ingredients should be placed in the Inhaler and boiling water poured onto them. The patient inhales the steam directly from the glass mouthpiece. Although the inventor’s identity remains somewhat uncertain, Dr Nelson’s decision to work with Maw & Sons is easier to reconstruct and understand. Not only was the company at the forefront of manufacturing and supplying medical equipment to hospitals and medical practitioners in Victorian Britain, they had themselves already marketed older ceramic inhalation devices and displayed these at the 1862 Exhibition. In 1835 Solomon Maw had taken over the company, originally founded by his father George Maw in 1814, from his elder brother John Hornby, and following Solomon’s death in 1861 his son Charles ran the business in partnership with John Thompson ( Anon, 1917, p 42). Maw & Sons were particularly well suited to making ceramic instruments as one of George’s sons, John Hornby Maw, had settled in Shropshire by 1850 and had set up a new business designing and manufacturing encaustic tiles, first in Worcester, then in Brosely, and finally Benthall ( Herbert, 2005). With these family connections to the ceramics industry in Shropshire, and their own manufacturing and marketing expertise, S. Maw & Son were an obvious partner for the inventor.

Figure 5 : Advertisements for some of the inhalation devices made by S. Maw https://dx.doi.org/10.15180/170807/005

Autumn 2020

Photograph looking towards the Nurses' Home on Punt Road, Hamilton Russell House on the right. Nurses can be seen walking along the covered way to and from the hospital. Inhalation therapies in the second half of the nineteenth century typically involved either volatile or combustible materials for smoking or vaporisation ( Sanders, 2007, p 79), including medicines of herbal origin such as stramonium, a direct link to modern antimuscarinic therapies. However, non-volatile, purified small molecular weight drugs began to emerge from the early twentieth century including adrenaline (extracted from adrenal glands; see Burnett, 1903) in 1903, atropine (purified from Hyoscyamus extracts; see Terray, 1909), ephedrine (structurally-related to adrenaline, purified from Ma Huang herb; see ( Chen and Schmid, 1924), and cortisone treatment by the 1950s (see Carryer, 1959). This required an evolution of device technologies to disperse bulk liquids into aerosol droplets that contained the dissolved (or suspended) drug, or to disperse ultra-fine bulk powders of the drug into inhalable aerosols under mechanical or aerodynamic forces. The result of this was the invention and development of the forerunners of modern inhalation devices including jet nebulizers (e.g. the Pneumostat, widely used from the 1930s but still generally housed in surgeries and pharmacies) or hand bulb nebulizers such as the Parke-Davis Glaseptic, and Abbots’ Aerohaler (1948), which is clearly comparable to modern dry powder inhalers, and ultimately the pMDI in the 1950s ( Sanders, 2007, p 79). The laundry box system shows what a complex and detailed system was required to keep staff clean and tidy.