Henry Carrington Bolton

“ At that date, and in the eightieth year of his age, he published a work on natural philosophy, in which he suggested taking the melting-point of ice and the boiling-point of water for two fixed points of thermometer scales, and dividing the space between them into twelve equal parts. This truly admirable proposition was not appreciated by his contemporaries who did not wholly believe in the constancy of these temperatures, and it was forgotten by succeeding philosophers, thus delaying greatly accurate observations of temperature. ”

“ Encouraged by her father, she pursued her studies under the guidance of eminent masters; she learned physiology and medicine with the erudite physician Gaetano Tacconi, mathematics with Manfredi, and natural philosophy with the disciples of Gassendi, and she astonished these profound philosophers by her talents. Laura Bassi studied for the pure love of knowledge, and had no ambition to seek public honors, but, to gratify the pardonable pride of a father as well as the earnest desires of her instructors, she consented to support a philosophical thesis before a learned audience of professors. ”

“ Newton made no use of the boiling-point of water in constructing his scale of temperatures, as he considered it variable; he recorded that water begins to boil at 33° of his scale, and boils vehemently at 34° to 341⁄2°. We now know that such fluctuations depend upon the position of the thermometer (which must not be immersed in the liquid) , on the pressure of the atmosphere, on the chemical purity of the water, and on the shape of the vessel holding it, so it is not surprising that doubts existed as to the constancy of the phenomenon. ”

“ THE separation of a liquid from solids suspended in it, by straining through some material pervious to the one and impenetrable to the other, was a familiar process in the remotest antiquity. Observation of various processes in nature, such as the purification of water by trickling through sandy soil, or perhaps the accidental passage of rain-water through an outstretched cloth, a garment, or a tent-cover, would obviously suggest the simple expedient. History fails to record the period of the invention or the name of the individual who first put it in practice. ”

“ I. The Open Air-Thermometer of Galileo.
Discoveries and inventions are sometimes the product of the genius or of the intelligent industry of a single person and leave his hand in a perfect state, as was the case with the barometer invented by Torricelli, but more often the seed of the invention is planted by one, cultivated by others, and the fruit is gathered only after slow growth by some one who ignores the original sower. ”

“ The physicians of Athens becoming jealous of Agnodice's great reputation and lucrative practice, summoned her before the Areopagus, and accused her of abusing her trusts in dealing with female patients. To establish her innocence, Agnodice disclosed her sex, and her persecutors then accused her of violating the law prohibiting women and slaves from studying medicine, but the wives of the most influential Athenians arose in her defense and eventually obtained a revocation of the law. ”

“ Réaumur, who next sought to improve the thermometer, was one of the most popular savants in France; his position in the world of science as well as in that of society, was far more conspicuous than that of the humble artisan Fahrenheit, and his aristocratic station is evidenced by his full name: René Antoine Ferchault, Seigneur de Réaumur, des Angles et de la Bermondière. He early became a member of the French Academy of Sciences, and for more than fifty years assiduously cultivated the sciences ”

“ It is the glory of America that she is distinguished above all countries not only as the cradle of liberty but also as the foster-mother of the intellectual advancement of women. Yet this has not always been the case ”

“ Heat makes air and water subtle and light; cold, as the opposite of heat, makes them smaller and presses them together and condenses all the air that the heat had made to rise, as may be clearly shown when a glass retort is hung with the mouth in a bucket of water and fire is placed under the belly. We shall then see that as soon as the air in the glass begins to get hot, that air rises out of the mouth of the retort, and the water gets full of bubbles, and this continues so long as the air gets hotter ”

“ Nelli in his life of Galileo cites the following passage: "At last we have among us an instrument by which with a bulb we measure the withdrawal of heat from all the external parts of the body and of the air; by which we discover, very surely, how much more or how much less, daily, we differ from the normal [temperature] ." ”

“ The student in art, thanks to the philanthropy of our venerable citizen, Peter Cooper, can, without incurring expense, acquire a knowledge of designing or of wood-engraving which will hardly fail to secure for her a competence. The student in biology will receive her share of attention at a summer school of science on our Atlantic seaboard, or held in connection with some enterprising institution of learning. The student in pharmacy and chemistry can conduct her researches on an equality with men, or, if she prefer, in laboratories controlled and officered in large part by women themselves. ”

“ He observed that thermometer stems were not sufficiently even and cylindrical, being often widest near the bulb, and said this was a source of inaccuracy.
Boyle felt the need of a standard permitting comparison of effects shown by different thermometers, and expressed it thus: "We are greatly at a loss for a standard whereby to measure cold. The common instruments show us no more than the relative coldness of the air, but leave us in the dark as to the positive degree thereof; whence we cannot communicate the idea of any such degree to another person. ”

“ The student in medicine now gains access to medical colleges in nearly every State in the Union, and the legitimacy of her pursuit as well as her ability to grapple with it gains increasing advocates. "She is no longer regarded as too good and too stupid to study medicine." ”

“ So that whenever observations of a thermometer are made by any curious person to signify the degree of heat in the air or other thing they cannot be understood, unless by those who have by them thermometers of the same make and adjustment. ”

“ IN attempting to sketch the history of the entrance of women into the medical profession, we find the earlier periods obscured by a meagerness of material and a lack of sequence which our superficial researches have failed to supplement.
Isolated cases of gifted women attaining notable surgical skill and successfully pursuing the divine art of healing are recorded at various epochs in the history of the intellectual development of woman, but they occur at long intervals of time and in widely scattered chronicles. ”

“ The historians of physics seem to have overlooked another passage of still greater interest which I discovered in the copy of Sanctorius at Washington. Translated it reads thus: "We determine the temperature by means of our glass instrument; we ascertain the high and the low (points) after this manner: we apply snow to the bulb of the glass instrument that the water may ascend to the highest point, then we approach the flame of a candle that the water may descend to the lowest point." ”

“ A century later another female practitioner flourished, of whom women have no reason to be proud. In the year 1738 Mrs. Joanna Stephens proclaimed in London that she had discovered a sovereign remedy for a painful disease. Notwithstanding her gross ignorance and vulgar demeanor, she secured a large circle of patients from among the upper and wealthy classes, and, after enriching herself by enormous fees drawn from their credulity, she proposed to make her medical discovery public in consideration of the modest sum of twenty-five thousand dollars. ”

“ Nothing can illustrate more cogently the imperfections of the best instruments then in scientific hands, and the character of those in ordinary use can be imagined; nothing can better demonstrate the immense advance made by Fahrenheit, and even those who deprecate the wide use of his illogical scale must pay tribute to the value of his services in developing reliable thermometers. ”

“ To satisfy her desire for knowledge she disguised herself in male attire, and, braving the fatal results of detection, dared to attend the schools of medicine forbidden to her sex. Among her instructors was numbered Herophilus, the greatest anatomist of antiquity and the first who dissected human subjects. After completing her studies, Agnodice preserved her disguise and practiced her chosen calling in the Grecian capital with great success, giving particular attention to the diseases of her own sex. ”

“ It would be well to have a universal and determinate standard for heat and cold, securing a definite proportion between the capacity of the bulb and the tube, and then taking for the commencement the degree of cold at which water begins to freeze, or better the temperature of boiling water, so that without sending a thermometer to a distance, one could communicate the degrees of heat or of cold found in experiments and record them for the use of posterity. ”

“ So long as the practice of medicine formed a part of the priestly functions, as in ancient Egypt, the crafty guardians of superstition sedulously concealed their superior knowledge from an ignorant and credulous people, and especially from women. ”

“ Five instruments for measuring heat were described by the academy:
I. The first is described as a long tube having a spherical bulb and closed with "Hermes' seal" at the flame of a lamp. The tube is filled with "spirit of wine up to a certain mark on the neck, so that the simple cold of snow or ice externally applied may not be able to condense it below the 20 degrees of the tube, nor on the contrary the greatest vigor of the sun's rays at midsummer to rarefy it above 80 degrees." ”

“ Half a century later lived a woman justly distinguished for combining in one person a high degree of female loveliness, womanly virtue, and intellectual strength: though not occupied with the art of healing, we can not pass in silence the accomplished Hypatia. ”

“ Of this the "Saggi" say: "We can lay down no certain rule to make it practice, often trials being the only way to effect it; by increasing and diminishing the size of the bulb or the bore of the cane, or the quality of the liquor, till at length it hits it right."
IV. The fourth thermometer had a very long tube bent in the form of a spiral, made "rather for fancy and curiosity to see the liquor run the decimals of degrees by the only impulse of a warm breath than for any accurate deduction." This instrument is styled a "very ticklish thermometer." ”

“ Several writers on the history of science make casual reference to the operations performed by the early chemists: some state in a general way their acquaintance with the processes of distillation, sublimation, filtration, etc.; others are more explicit. Hermann Kopp, in his exhaustive "Geschichte der Chemie," [2] states that "filtration as a chemical process was first accurately described by Geber, who calls it by a special name, destillatio per filtrum, 'trickling through a filter,' in contrast to the collection of a liquid by ordinary distillation." ”

“ Women desirous of acquiring medical knowledge are no longer obliged to disguise themselves in male attire like Agnodice the Athenian, nor are practitioners liable to suffer the penalties of the law for their works of benevolence and charity. ”

“ Thermometers for a special and limited use were manufactured about 1727 by John Fowler, Swithin's alley, near the Royal Exchange, London; these were adapted to the cultivation of hot-house plants, being graduated to indicate degrees most "kindly" to given plants. The instruments varied in length from 18 inches to 4 feet, and the stems were marked from freezing-point of water to 90° a temperature equal to that of warm water capable of being endured by the hand held still, certainly a very vague standard but perhaps sufficiently accurate for vegetable life. ”

“ The rapidity of filtration does not seem to be hastened by lengthening the longer arm of the siphon, and is chiefly dependent on the number of threads in the filter, and on their fineness. In one experiment, thirty-two strands of cotton yarn filtered twice as fast as sixteen strands, and only half as fast as sixty-four strands. Oil filters much slower than saline solutions, and the latter much slower than pure water.
We have used the expression "capillary siphoning" in describing anethisis, and perhaps it needs justification. ”

“ It is still more sensitive if one warms the bulb with his breath, as if one wished to speak a word into its ear to command the water to descend.
"The reason of this motion is that the air heated in the tube rarefies and dilates and wishes to have more room, and therefore presses upon the water and makes it descend. ”

“ The invention of medicine was almost universally attributed by the ancients to the gods, and it is a curious fact that in both Egyptian and Grecian mythology we find female deities occupying important relations to the healing art. To the Egyptian deity Isis, the wife and sister of Osiris, peculiar medical skill was attributed, and a multitude of diseases were regarded as the effects of her anger. ”

“ Surely that winter was remarkably mild in frozen Iceland, for zero is often exceeded in countries not regarded as arctic; yet Boerhaave remarks that "nature never produced a cold beyond zero." The Meteorological Yearbook for Denmark shows that the temperature fell in March 1888, at Stykkisholm, Iceland, to −8.5° F.
There is another element of uncertainty in Fahrenheit's scale. Both Musschenbroek and Boerhaave state that the bulb of Fahrenheit's thermometer contains 11,124 parts of mercury at zero and that when the bulb is placed in melting ice the metal expands 32 of these parts ”

“ The ancient and honorable universities of Italy were, we believe, the first to recognize the capacity of women to give instruction of a high character. The University of Bologna, founded in 1116, was attended in the year 1250 by ten thousand students, engaged in the study of jurisprudence, of philosophy, and of medicine. ”

“ Kircher explains correctly the movement of the column of water caused by the expansion of the air, and adds the instrument indicates the goodness, the mildness, and salubrity of the air in different places, cultivated fields, plains or mountains, as well as the temperature of man in disease. He mentions a thermoscope containing mercury, but does not describe its construction; the text is accompanied by the figure of a thermoscope of which the stem is twisted into a spiral several feet in length. ”