184 MEETINGS. 



The Secretary announced that arrangements had been 

 made by the Council for the delivery during the ensuing 

 session of three short lectures on scientific subjects, the first 

 of which, by the President, would be given at the following 

 meeting of the Society. 



Monthly Meeting held on February 18th, 1903, Dr. J. Aikman, 

 President, in the chair. 



An Extraordinary General Meeting had been convened 

 for this date, for the purpose of deciding upon certain 

 proposed alterations in the Rules of the Society. The new 

 Rules, as altered, are printed in the Transactions for 1902, 

 p. 105. 



The following ladies and gentlemen were unanimously 

 elected members of the Society : — 



Dr. Henry Draper Bishop, M.D., M.E.C.S., L.R.C.P. ; 

 Dr. H. P. D'Arcy Benson, M.D., CM., F.R.C.S., Edin. ; 

 Mrs. Aikman ; Miss Aikman ; Miss Edith Boys ; Mrs. E. C. 

 Ozanne ; Mr. F. J. Fletcher ; Mr. G. Dalgliesh ; Mr. W. O. 

 Voute ; Miss E. L. Bailey ; Mr. V. D. Sluys ; Mr. Cecil P. 

 Hurst ; Mr. W. H. Foote. 



The first of a course of short scientific lectures was 

 delivered by the President, Dr. J. Aikman, the subject 

 being : " The Evolution of the Thermometric Scales." 



The lecturer mentioned the first attempt to measure heat 

 by the Italian physician Sanctorio about the year 1590. 

 Twenty years later Cornelius Drebel contrived, independently, 

 a similar instrument. It remained for Newton and Fahrenheit, 

 in the latter half of the 17th century, to devise the scale 

 which is now in common use in this country. The freezing 

 and the boiling point of water were used as fixed points in 

 this scale, but both observers seem to have been obsessed by 

 the endeavour to include the temperature of the human body 

 as a fixed point ; and an endeavour to fix an absolute zero. 

 Fahrenheit made his zero from the coldest point of the winter 

 in Dantzic in 1709. His scale then read Zero ; freezing point 

 of water, 8 ; temperature of human body, 24 ; boiling point 

 of water, 53. These figures were too small for comfortable 

 working, so he multiplied them by four, which is his scale 

 as it is now in use. Celsius omitted the absolute zero, and 

 made 100 degrees between the freezing and boiling points 

 of water — the C entigrade Scale. Reaumur followed the same 

 points, but made only 80 degrees. Most scientists have 



