Today medical thermometers are electronic contraptions that come in various forms and are easy to use and easy to break – as disposable as most everything seems to be of late. When I was a kid medical thermometers were glass tubes with a thin line of mercury running up on a scale inside it, terminating in a mercury bulb that you’d stick under your tongue, or in your armpit, or worse. They worked extremely reliably, because they relied on a basic law of physics, and lasted forever so long as you didn’t drop them on the floor. And they all looked the same – nobody messed with a winning design.
But recently I visited the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, MD, and I saw an innovative twist on the mercury thermometer.
This was the usual glass tube, but it was bent at an angle.
Why? Because that would allow the patient to read his own temperature. He could glance at the ivory scale and read it while the tip was placed in his armpit. I suppose this would save the nurse making her rounds a few seconds – which given the scale and carnage of that horrible conflict would add up to make a difference.
Pretty neat!