Pneumatic medicine

D. A. Stansfield and R. G. Stansfield, Dr Thomas Beddoes and James Watt Preparatory Work 1794-6 for the Bristol Pneumatic Institute) Medical History, 30 (1986), pp. 276-302 D. P. Miller and T. H. Levere, Inhale it and See The Collaboration between Thomas Beddoes and James Watt in Pneumatic Medicine) Ambix, 55 (2008), pp. 5-28. 

Between mid-1792 and late 1793 Beddoes published a number of works, which set out the theoretical basis for his plans to develop pneumatic medicine. That basis lay primarily in the notion of regulating the atmosphere, that is, adjusting (in experimental and clinical situations) the amount of oxygen that the breathed atmosphere contained, or at least the amount of oxygen taken in by patients. See, in particular, T. Beddoes, Observations on the Nature and Cure of Calculus, Sea Scurvy, Consumption, Catarrh and Fever Together with Conjectures upon Several other subjects of Physiology... 

See Latour, Essay Review Postmodern , p. 152 S. Schaffer, Measuring Virtue Eudiometry, Enlightenment and Pneumatic Medicine , in A. Cunningham and R. French (eds). The Medical Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 281-318, pp. 289-90. 

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