Royal Naval Biography/Jekyll, John
JOHN JEKYLL, Esq.
[Commander.]
Was made a lieutenant towards the close of 1796; and commander on the 21st Mar. 1812. Previous to this latter promotion, he had displayed much ingenuity in contriving the common hand-pump to serve as a fire-engine on board ships; and some years afterwards, obtained a patent for certain improvements in steam or vapour baths, to render the same more portable and convenient than those then in common use. In Dec. 1823, he presented the Bath and West of England Agricultural Society, with an excellent break for shoeing oxen, which had been in use for some years, and was placed in the cattle yard of the society. He at the same time exhibited a portable vapour bath, which had been highly approved of by H.R.H. the Duke of York, also by several of the most intelligent and respectable medical men of the army and navy, and is now used in some of the metropolitan hospitals. He likewise displayed a model of a mail-coach, to prevent the pressure of the vehicle against the horses, in descending hills. If, as has been said, steam is a powerful and successful agent in the yellow fever of the West Indies, the typhus fever, and the cholera morbus of India, Commander Jekyll’s vapour bath must be of great importance to both services.