Bed Pans & Boom Sticks

I went to Richmond in Richmondshire this week, and invested in a piece of exciting technology: a new bed-warming pan. This is a simple device (costing only four-and-a-half pounds) which alleviates the coldness of the sheets ahead of a night’s kip. One fills the pan with embers and coals from the parlour fire, then places it under the bedsheets. Hey Presto! The bed is warmed and its occupant need not be a-shiver as he takes his nocturnal rest.

People my age are sometimes reticent when it comes to employing new and exciting technological developments, so it behoves us to do a little reading of online reviews beforehand, to find reassurance and assauge our nerves. Cora Millet-Robinet’s Domestic Economy (1853) states:

A copper warming pan is indispensable to a household. Take care to have a big enough quantity of embers, above all some red cinders, when you want to heat a bed. Get it smouldering well before you use it, otherwise the fire will soon go out and the bed will not warm up. You must move the warming pan constantly to avoid scorching the sheets.

This sounds like good advice. However, there are those who instinctively shrink from such novel and new-fangled innovation. Take Dr James Adair, for instance:

People in health ought never to have their beds warmed; not only because the fumes of the coals are in some degree noxious, but because warmth thus applied enervates the body. If, however, invalids and sick persons cannot from custom dispense with bed warming, one or two quarts of sand, made red hot in an iron pot, and put into the warming pan, will be void of all offensive smell.

-The Dangerous Effects of Hot and Crowded Rooms (1790).

Red hot sand, indeed! So whose advice should I heed, Mme Millet-Robinet's, or Dr Adair's? I found out for myself, of course, below, and am more inclined to side with the former. When advice conflicts, we must test the claims for ourselves, or we may turn to God’s Word and let that have the final say, at least in all matters pertaining to faith and conduct. Whatever new technologies and innovations this century spews out, may we always have regard to the wisdom of the ancients, and, primarily, to God’s written word, which offers our spirits greater comfort than even a warm bed can bestow upon a tired body.