in France and Germany about 1825. To-day, in case of need, we have
instruments which write in instructive curves the form of the
pulse-wave, and enable us to settle questions which sometimes could not
be settled without this delicate means.

The study of the temperature of the body was, as I have said, a mere
matter of the touch until our same Galileo applied a thermometer to
learn more accurately its changes. Sanctorius again followed in his
steps, and has left us in his works curious drawings of forms of
thermometer applicable to medical uses. Our profession is, however,
inapt to hold on to useless things, and our knowledge of fever, its
risks and its remedies, was for many a day far behind any need for the
delicate appreciations of the thermometer.

Hence it is that very few physicians did more in the last three
centuries as regards the temperature of the body than speak of it as
high or low. Sanctorius was too far ahead of his time to teach us the
true value of medical thermometry. It was forgotten for many a day. In
the last century, in Dehaen and Hunter, it again receives some notice,
and again drops out of use. At last we are ripe for it, and Wunderlich,
in a classical book, about twenty-five years ago, puts it in a position
of permanent utility. The physician of to-day knows more both of fever
and of its consequences, and finds in his thermometer an indispensable
ally.

Within but a few years the instruments of precision have so multiplied
that a well-trained consultant may be called on to know and handle as
many tools as a mechanic. Their use, the exactness they teach and
demand, the increasing refinement in drugs, and our ability to give them
in condensed forms, all tend towards making the physician more accurate,