chaffern

plural chafferns

1. obsoleteA vessel for heating water.

   A glass globe is then to be inverted over the mouth of the matrass, and the heat of a charcoal-chaffern being applied, iodine will sublime in great abundance.

   1832, William Woodville, Medical Botany, page 114

   3 more examples

   The wards should be daily fumigated by means of thus, benzoin, or other aromatics, or wetted gunpowder thrown on burning coals, put in an irot pot or chaffern, or with the steams of warm vinegar placed in the middle of the ward.

   1780, Donald Monro, Observations on the Means of Preserving the Health of Soldiers, page 102

   His method of employing the fumigations for sheds or byres containing livestock merely consisted in filling a chaffern two-thirds full of red-hot cinders and in inserting among them a crucible in which a sufficient quantity of roll brimstone was placed.

   1888 April 16, H. Valentine Knaggs, “Sulphur in Diphtheria and As a Germ-Destroyer In Disease”, in The Therapeutic Gazette, volume 12, number 4, page 229

   The houses, too, were rich with treasures gatherd from far and wide— brass pots and chafferns from France, gold work from Venice and Genoa , habergeons from Milan , ewers of blue glass powdered with gold, alabaster pots painted and gilded, "cushions of god embroidered with ramping lions of silver," and coverings of cloth of gold.

   1890 January 25, A. S. Green, “The Wealth of England Under the Tudors”, in The Speaker, volume 1, page 88