g J. Lindhard. 



the first reading and too high in the next, which is presumably due 

 to a vasomotor reaction against the cold irritant. Finally, we must 

 also note, that, with a strong rise of temperature in a room or on 

 entering a heated room from the cold, the temperature of the mouth 

 may rise still higher. This is perhaps the reason why a German 

 phthisiologist warns against leaving the thermometer longer than 

 10 minutes. 



As the temperature of the mouth is not the same in the differ- 

 ent positions of the body, or perhaps more correctly, as it varies 

 with changes in position, the position during the reading ought to 

 be noted. 



In the following, when nothing else is said, the temperature 

 has been measured in a quiet sitting position in the right side of 

 the mouth. 



While the place where the rectal or mouth temperature is 

 measured or ought to be measured, can be fixed with fairly great 

 precision, so that any deviation from this place must be limited, 

 occuring in certain known, fixed directions, and thus on the whole 

 of quite minor importance in the reading, the case is very different 

 with the temperature of the skin. The skin is not a definite 

 position in the same sense as the sulcus alveolo-lingualis; on the 

 skin we have different localities which vary as regards temperature, 

 so that the readings may differ considerably. Parts of the skin are 

 practically always in immediate contact with the air, others are, as 

 a rule, covered with clothes and so on; but it is common to all of 

 them that the receiver of the thermometer only comes into contact 

 with cutaneous tissues, the firm epidermis of which can never sur- 

 round it completely, as also that the medium lying between is air, 

 whilst the skin will always be in immediate or indirect contact 

 with the atmosphere. 



In the axilla and similar places we may be able temporarily 

 to form a closed space inaccessible to the outer air, and in such 

 places a thermometer of the usual shape may be employed for the 

 reading of the temperature ^, but if the temperature is to be measured 

 at a place where the receiver of the thermometer can only be 

 brought into contact with a practically level part of the skin, a 

 thermometer of a special shape must be employed, so that the 

 receiver and the part of the skin concerned are isolated from the 

 atmosphere during the reading. Usually the mercury bulb is flat- 

 tened and bent spirally at right angles to the tube of the thermo- 



1 Special thermometers liave been construeted for reading the axilla temperature, 

 but they are of no special interest, as the axilla is not used in clinical practice. 



