Human bake oven
The human bake oven, also known as the Tallerman–Sheffield treatment, Tallerman treatment or Tallerman's apparatus, was a Victorian era medical contraption used to treat various ailments, primarily joint problems such as rheumatism. Based on the knowledge that heat is often useful in alleviating pain, patients would be placed in the iron lung-like machine and then baked at temperatures typically around 138°C (280°F) but sometimes as high as 204°C (400°F). The sensation was variously described as either quite pleasant or feeling like one was being roasted alive. History The idea for the human bake oven came from the knowledge that heat was useful in alleviating pain, something that had been known since antiquity and had previously been employed in medicine through treatments such as mustard plasters. The human bake oven was the result of work carried out by the engineers Thomas Henry Rees, Evelyn Sheffield and Lewis A. Tallerman in the late 1890s. The idea for the bake oven was thought out independently by both Rees and Sheffield, who pondered how hot dry air could be used for medical treatment. The two together took a patent for "An Improved Medical Dry Bath for Applying Superheated Steam or Gases and Medicines in