On methods for the continuous (photographic) and quasi-continuous registration of the diurnal curve of the temperature of the animal body / by Arthur Gamgee.

  • Gamgee, Arthur, 1841-1909.
Date:
[1908]
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: On methods for the continuous (photographic) and quasi-continuous registration of the diurnal curve of the temperature of the animal body / by Arthur Gamgee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    VI. On Methods for the Continuous ( Bhotogmphjc^igm Quasi- Continuous Registration of the Diurnal Curve of the Temperature of the Animal Body. By Arthur Gamgee, M.D., F.R.C.P., F.R.S., Hon. LL.D. Edin., Hon. D.Sc. Mancli., Emeritus Professor of Physiology in the University of Manchester. (Received June 15,—Read June 18, 1908.) [Plates 20 and 21.] Introduction. Since the days of Hippocrates, the attention of physicians has been directed to the importance of the changes in temperature of the human body in reference to the phenomena of disease. Long before the great Scottish physician, William Cullen, had in his Nosology defined the “ Pyrexiae ” as diseases characterised by the following symptoms, others had drawn attention to the relations of increased temperature to certain morbid processes. Cullen defined the febrile diseases as follows :— Post horrorem, pulsus frequens, color major, plurimse functiones lteste, viribus corporis, prsesertim artuum, imminutis.” In this luminous definition Cullen had crystallised, as it were, the ideas which had been uttered in the seventeenth century by Sanctorius, later in the eighteenth century by Boerhaave, and his distinguished commentator, van Swieten. It was Sanctorius, the author of the ‘ Medicina Statica ’ (15G1-1636),# the predecessor of the investigators of the phenomena of Nutrition of to-day, of the Voits, the Bubners, of the Zuntzes, the Atwaters, who first insisted on the determination of the temperature of the animal body as being one of its most important constants, but it is only when we come to the great Dutch physician, Boerhaave (1668-1738),f that we find the thermometer referred to as an actual aid to diagnosis. “ Calor febrilis thermoscopio externus sensu tegri et rubore urinse internus cognoscitur,” and his famous commentator, van Swieten,]; though not contradicting the false dictum that an increase in the pulse rate constitutes the essence of fever, asserts that observations of the temperature taken by the hand are inconclusive :— “ Omnium ergo certissima mensura habetur per thermoscopia, qualia hodie pulcherrima habentur, et portalia quidem, fahrenheitiana dicta a primo inventore : * Ars Sauctorii Sanctorii, ‘De Statica Medicina,’ Yenet., 1614. t Boerhaave, ‘ Aphorismi de cognoscendis et curandis morbis,’ Lugd. Batav., MDCCXXII, Aph. 673. + Gerardi van Swieten, ‘ Commentaria in Hermanni Boerhaave Aphorismos,’ Lugd. Batav., MDCCXLY, tom. secundua, p. 287. VOL. CC.—B 267. - 2 f 2 21.9.08-