Many people struggle to hydrate their lungs properly, either because they cannot use their nose to breathe (tracheal tube), have small airways that easily block with secretions (babies), are dehydrated and have sticky lung secretions, or a tired and weak and cannot clear their lungs themselves.
Inhaled steam and (un)adulterated vapours have been used as therapies for respiratory problems for thousands of years. And various devices have been used to produce moistened air. Hester Angove, in one of the first respiratory physiotherapy books written in the years before widespread antibiotic use, wrote that the treatment for broncho-pulmonary pneumonia included; ‘A steam kettle… frequently kept boiling day and night’ (Angove, 1936, p. 118). For acute bronchitis, the patient needed ‘a bronchitis kettle or inhaler with some medical vapour’, to ‘relieve the tenseness in the case and the hard cough’ (ibid).
Today’s jet, ultrasonic, mesh, and ‘smart’ nebulisers are portable, battery-powered, and relatively inexpensive devices that produce an aerosol without needing to heat the liquid. These deliver consistent, microscopic droplets of sterile water or various aerosolised drugs entrained in the air, and breathed in by the patient via a facemark of hand-held mouthpiece, reaching much deeper into the lungs than the devices once used.
Description provided by David Nicholls of New Zealand.
References: https://www.journalagent.com/eurasianjpulmonol/pdfs/EJP_16_1_1_7.pdf.
Angove, H. S. (1936). Remedial Exercises for Certain Diseases of the Heart and Lung. Faber & Faber.
