Medical thermometry and human temperature / by E. Seguin.

Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical thermometry and human temperature / by E. Seguin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    These thirty years gave few methodical and comprehensive results of temperature in health or in disease. But a new era opened in 1835, when Becquerel and Bresehet published their researches on human temperature (in Annates des Sciences JSfat/arelles, Zoologie, tom. iii., iv., et ix.). Although they regarded pathological conditions but slightly, they tested the variations of temperature in different parts of the bodies of men and animals by means of extraordinary sensitive thermo- electric apparatus. They found the temperature of inflamed parts higher than that of the healthy ones; and established the mean healthy temperature of man at 37° Centigrade = 98.6° Fahr. This was the corner-stone of the new edifice, Medical Thermometry. Another production of great merit, but with no pathological bearing, was the Zoo-physiological treatise of Berger, determin- ing the temperature in various species of animals, Fails Rela- ti/s d la Construction d’une Echette de Deyres de la Chaleur Animate (in Memoires de la Societe de Geneve, tom. v., part 2, tom. vii., part 1). Edwards furnished a comprehensive arti- cle in Todd’s Cyclopedia, vol. ii., p. 648, 1836-39. Collard de Martigny published in 1836 : De VInfluence de la Circula- tion Generate et Pulmonare sur la Clialeur du Sang. B. H. Berard wrote the physiological, and Cliomel the pathological part, of the article “ Warmth,” in the Medical Dictionary 32 vols.). Bouilland and Donne used thermometry in their practice. Piorry had a thermometer added to his stethoscope, urged the necessity of even measuring the temperature of the skin, and strengthened the claim of the thermometer by repeat- ing this prophetic utterance of Biot: “ Lorsqu’on voit taut de resultats obtenus par le seul secours d’un pen de mereure enferme dans un tube de verre, et qu’on songe qu’un morceau de fer suspendu sur un pivot a fait decouvrir le Nouveau Monde, on con^it que rien de ce qui pent agrandir et perfectionner les sens de l’homme ne doit etre pris en legere consideration.” In 1837 Sir B. Brodie made known his experiments “ On the Elevation of the Temperature after the Division of the Spinal Cord, etc.” {Med. Chir. Transact., vol. xx., p. 118). Wisting- hausen, Fricke of Hamburg, and Friedrich Nasse furnished val- uable contributions, at the same time (1839) that Gavarret con- firmed (in the Journal VExperience) several of the almost for- gotten discoveries of De ITaen.