4 J- Lindhard. 



the temperature of the mouth should be taken in a heated room, 

 or whether it may be taken anywhere. An English investigator 

 finds the mouth temperature "much more unreliable on the sea 

 than on land". Continually no "why"? The temperature of the 

 axilla has silently disappeared from clinical medicine. No physician 

 wanting to know the temperature of his patient now-a-days thinks 

 of measuring it in the axilla. Why? It is said that this reading 

 takes too long, that the axilla temperature like that of the mouth 

 is "less reliable"; but no further evidence is given. 



I cannot help thinking that the confusion lies in the word "body 

 temperature", this mysterious conception, defined by no one, and 

 which no one can define, since it lacks all real basis as soon as we 

 leave the vague generality, namely, any temperature measured in or 

 on the animal organism contrasted with the temperature in air or 

 water. 



We need only refer to any physiological text-book to learn that 

 the temperature is not the same in the various organs of the body. 

 Thus, if we measure it in the rectum, we do not obtain, as one 

 author maintains, "an exact expression for the body-temperature", 

 but, provided that the reading is accurately taken, merely an exact 

 expression for the rectal temperature. If we now enquire into the 

 factors which determine the rectal temperature, we may learn what 

 the reading means and for what purposes it may^ eventually be used. 



In the following pages I shall endeavour to answer some one 

 or other "why" in thermometry, on the basis of a series of tempera- 

 ture measurements made in arctic regions over a period., of two years. 



The local temperature which is of special interest in clinical 

 practice is the rectal temperature, but the temperature of the mouth 

 is still employed by not a few physicians. The axillary temperature 

 is probably no longer used, but as we have the data from its former 

 application at any rate, and as the temperature of the skin is of 

 general interest, compared with the other local temperatures named 

 above, I have tried as far as possible to include the skin tempera- 

 ture in my investigations. 



The rectum is the most usual and, as will appear from the 

 following, the most reliable place for the clinical reading of tempera- 

 ture. There is hardly any reason for entering into details with 

 regard to the measuring instrument itself, the thermometer. I have 

 employed mercury maximum thermometers, the scale of which read 

 to 01° C; where two decimals occur in the tables below, the second 

 decimal has been estimated. As my main object was to determine 



