Dr. Thomas BeddoesBorn 13 Apr 1760; died 24 Dec 1808 at age 48. English physician and philosopher who, in the late 1780s, began to explore the potential medical uses of gases. He founded the Pneumatic Medical Institute in Bristol (1798). The institute offered oxygen therapy, but because Beddoes' assumption–that some diseases would naturally respond to a higher or lower oxygen concentration–was incorrect, the treatments offered no real clinical benefit. However, Humphry Davy, launched his chemistry career there, researching nitrous oxide (“diminished nitrous air”). Beddoes published Hygeia: Or Essays Moral and Medical, on the Causes Affecting the Personal State of the Middling and Affluent Classes, 3 vols. (1802), a formal regimen for daily diet, exercise, and sleep for illness prevention. |
