enlarge image

lesson materials on thermometrics (3)

Eighteenth century research contributed to the broadening of acquisition of new instrumental, especially thermometers and barometers, among well-off classes of certain European countries, a phenomenon that yielded the domestication of environmental temperature.

This question would allow us to bring up the subject of publics and instruments: in this particular case, on the transition of uses, from experimental, “professional” to domestic.

This phenomenon did not follow the same pace regarding the domestication of body’s temperature. This does not mean that the utilization of the thermometer as an instrument for the establishment of disease diagnosis did not happen or was not an issue in disputes among physicians since the 17th Century and above all since the beginning of the 18th Century.

It was already apparent in this period for certain physicians to resort to natural science concepts. In fact, this is a question that would allow us to speak, from the point of view of medicine, about classical Galenism and humoralism, and about the disputed implementation of this instrument as a tool for customary exploration of the body upon disease.

It would also allow us to speak about the construction of the clinical history along this period and about the differences between the concepts of symptom –as a subjective manifestation of the alteration of life processes- and sign –as an objective fact, open for measurement.

The experimental application of the thermometer in medicine became systematic along the 19th Century. Beyond different thermometric scales, experimental models developed and the array of components used, this practice yielded descriptions and classifications of diseases from records and entries produced by such instruments, that is, the creation of another constituent feature in such scientific practice.