History of the Thermometer

Ewa Grodzinsky and Märta Sund Levander ()
Additional contact information
Ewa Grodzinsky: Linköping University
Märta Sund Levander: Linköping University

Chapter Chapter 3 in Understanding Fever and Body Temperature, 2020, pp 23-35 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The temperature of the human body has been used as a diagnostic sign since the earliest days of clinical medicine. The earliest thermal instruments were developed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1665, it was suggested that the melting point of ice and the boiling point of water should be the standard. The most common scales today are the Fahrenheit, Centigrade, and the Kelvin scales. Since the earliest days of medicine, physicians have recognized that the human body can exhibit an abnormal rise in temperature, usually defined as fever, as an obvious symptom of illnesses. In 1868, Wunderlich established that the temperature in a healthy person is constant and that variation of temperature occurs in disease. The Allbutt thermometer was the first practical device to become commercially available. The technology has then improved to provide highly accurate devices, for example, thermal imaging; its use is still growing in medicine.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-21886-7_3

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783030218867

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-21886-7_3

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().