The aim of this study was to describe the process and practices that informed fever therapy treatment at the Ontario Hospital, Toronto, and to describe the work of mental health nurses providing fever therapy at the Ontario Hospital, Toronto from 1941 to 1950. For almost a decade (1941 to 1950) the Ontario Hospital, Toronto operated a fever therapy unit for the treatment of neurosyphilis, an advanced stage of syphilis. This unit, the only one of its kind in Ontario, used specially designed cabinets to elevate patient temperatures in an attempt to kill the bacterium known to cause neurosyphilis. These treatments, lasting 8 to 10 hours, was taxing on patients, both mentally and physically, and often left the patient in a compromised medical state. The fever unit at the Ontario Hospital, Toronto was managed entirely by mental health nurses with next to no oversight from physicians, even in times of adverse medical reaction. This image of the mental health nurse as a highly skilled and competent practitioner is not one that has been historically assigned to this area of nursing. This thesis contributes to the history of mental health nursing in Ontario and nursing overall.

A transient three-dimensional simulation program was developed to study the effects of scanning speed, scanning pattern, blood perfusion, transducer choice and multiple tilted transducers with overlapping foci during scanned focussed ultrasound hyperthermia. The results showed that (1) the temperature fluctuations increase linearly with decreasing scanning speed, (2) the temperature fluctuations are a weak, increasingly exponential function of the blood perfusion rate, and (3) that the largest temperature fluctuation is always located at the acoustical focal depth on the scan path independently of focal plane depth. Simulations using multiple scan paths showed that relatively uniform average temperature distributions can be achieved at the focal zone as long as the spacing between the concentric scans was not greater than the diameter of the focus of the power field. Finally, the results showed that using multiple tilted transducers with overlapping foci, increased focussing can be obtained at the focal depth.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1939. / Typescript. Includes abstract and vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 100-109).