When was clinical thermometer invented

Wunderlich CRA. Das Verhalten der Eigenwarme in Krankheiten. Leipzig, O. Wigand Translated by New Sydenham Society, Allbutt TC. Medical thermometry.

Brit Med Chir Rev ; 45 : — Cited in: Norman JM, ed. Aldershot, Scholar Press, Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.

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Volume Article Contents References. A brief history of the clinical thermometer. Pearce J. Emeritus Consultant Neurologist, Anlaby.

Oxford Academic. Google Scholar. Centigrade means "consisting of or divided into degrees. The Celsius scale has degrees between the freezing point 0 degrees and boiling point degrees of pure water at sea level air pressure.

The term "Celsius" was adopted in by an international conference on weights and measures. Lord Kelvin took the whole process one step further with his invention of the Kelvin Scale in The Kelvin Scale measures the ultimate extremes of hot and cold. Kelvin developed the idea of absolute temperature—called the " Second Law of Thermodynamics —and developed the dynamical theory of heat.

In the 19th century , scientists were researching what the lowest temperature possible was. The Kelvin scale uses the same units as the Celsius scale , but it starts at Absolute Zero , the temperature at which everything, including air, freezes solid.

Absolute zero is 0 degrees Kelvin, which is equal to minus degrees Celsius. When a thermometer was used to measure the temperature of a liquid or of air, the thermometer was kept in the liquid or air while a temperature reading was being taken. Obviously, when you take the temperature of the human body you can't do the same thing. The mercury thermometer was adapted so it could be taken out of the body to read the temperature.

The clinical or medical thermometer was modified with a sharp bend in its tube that was narrower than the rest of the tube. This narrow bend kept the temperature reading in place after you removed the thermometer from the patient by creating a break in the mercury column. That is why you shake a mercury medical thermometer before and after you use it to reconnect the mercury and get the thermometer to return to room temperature. In , the Italian inventor Santorio Santorio invented the mouth thermometer and perhaps the first crude clinical thermometer.

However, it was both bulky, inaccurate, and took too long to get a reading. The first doctors to routinely take the temperature of their patients were Hermann Boerhaave — ; Gerard L.

These doctors found temperature correlated to the progress of an illness. However, few of their contemporaries agreed, and the thermometer was not widely used. English physician Sir Thomas Allbutt — invented the first practical medical thermometer used for taking the temperature of a person in It was portable, 6 inches in length, and able to record a patient's temperature in 5 minutes.

Theodore Hannes, a pioneering biothermodynamics scientist and flight surgeon with the Luftwaffe during World War II, invented the ear thermometer. David Phillips invented the infrared ear thermometer in , the same year that Dr. Actively scan device characteristics for identification.

Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. The early version of this thermometer contained alcohol and in Fahrenheit developed a mercury thermometer using the same scale. He assigned the freezing point of water at 32 degrees, the boiling point of water as degrees and the normal body temperature as Later on in that same century, the inventor Anders Celsius developed a numerical scale, called the Celsius or Centigrade scale.

This scale was based on a scale of zero to one hundred where the freezing point of water is zero, the boiling point of water is degrees and normal body temperature is 37 degrees. The first real medical thermometer was invented by Sir Thomas Allbut in