Family thermometry : a manual of thermonetry, for mothers, nurses, hospitalers, etc., and all who have charge of the sick and of the young / by Edward Seguin.

  • Seguin, Edward, 1812-1880.
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Family thermometry : a manual of thermonetry, for mothers, nurses, hospitalers, etc., and all who have charge of the sick and of the young / by Edward Seguin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/84 (page 5)
    By its aid, the first question for a mother is not, what is the name of the disease which has attacked the child ? but in what proportion is life escaping or has already escaped by the feverish process of burning (ustion) as marked on the stem of the physiological thermometer ? ... .For all diseases—whatever be their seat or apparent diversity—have this in common, that they are ustions^ whose conibustive process is marked hy a rise of the thermometer during the period of invasion^ and hy a fall towards the period of exhaustion of a disease. Hence all the diseases may be viewed by a mother or a nurse, who is deprived of the light of modern medicine, as exagger- ated or diminished combustions (respectively hyperpy- rexia, and apyrexia). From this point of view, the appreciation of the temperature of the body takes the precedence of every- thing else in the art of taking care of children and patients generally. The instruments by which the tem- peratures of the sick may be ascertained, and their ten- dencies towards a better or worse condition may be favored or combated, are second to none among the means of nursing and education ; and the manual of these instruments is likely to give the information most needed by mothers, nurses, sisters of mercy, teachers, and all those who have charge of children and of the sick. In this belief I will try to diffuse a clear understand- ing of the use of the family thermometers. The first of our thermometers is our own hand, since we can use it when we have no other; and if it does not give, like the manufactured instruments, the mathemati- cal degrees of temperature, yet, by intelligent modifications