Doctors only started measuring body temperature 200 years ago – here's why

By Teresa Hollerbach, Research Scholar, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

Over the past year, fever thermometers have become omnipresent. Body temperature is taken in front of shops, at airports, even before visiting a museum – often with ultra-modern devices. So-called fever cameras or fever scanners can determine the body temperature even without contact. It might now seem obvious that fevers are connected to a high body temperature – in many cultures, the question “do you have a temperature?” is clear evidence of that – but this hasn’t always been the case.

The beginnings of measuring fever go back more than 400 years. At the turn of the 17th century,…

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