eprintid: 36111
rev_number: 16
eprint_status: archive
userid: 8492
dir: disk0/00/03/61/11
datestamp: 2025-02-19 10:00:13
lastmod: 2025-03-06 18:52:18
status_changed: 2025-02-19 10:00:13
type: article
metadata_visibility: show
creators_name: Gänger, Stefanie
corp_creators: Universität Heidelberg, Historisches Seminar
title: 38°C: Fever, Thermometry, and the Coming into Being of a Global Norm, ca. 1868–1890
subjects: ddc-610
divisions: i-72020
abstract: This article traces the global biography of the idea that, if the thermometer read 38°C, ‘one need not be afraid’ to speak of a fever, as one early advocate of thermometry put it in 1873. The article revisits how the idea of fever as quantifiable temperature and the related numerical standards first came into being in mid-nineteenth century Leipzig and Berlin. Subsequently, it traces these numerical thresholds’ dissemination across the globe over the 1870s and 1880s and endeavors to explain their ready acceptance, in places as diverse as Japan or Mexico. It argues that thermometry, though initially quite controversial, could become unquestioned within decades not so much on account of its medical utility but a range of other reasons: its suitability for standardization, association with technological modernity, the period’s gendered epistemic order and the very fact of its being a number – the period’s broader penchant for quantifying objectification.
date: 2025
publisher: Univ. of Chicago Press
id_scheme: DOI
id_number: 10.11588/heidok.00036111
fp7_project_id: 101086081 and 101007579
official_url: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/733980
ppn_swb: 1919271775
own_urn: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-heidok-361117
language: eng
bibsort: GANGERSTEF38CFEVERTH20250219
full_text_status: public
publication: Isis
volume: 116
number: 1
place_of_pub: Chicago, Ill.
pagerange: 126-135
issn: 0021-1753 (Druck-Ausg.); 1545-6994 (Online-Ausg.)
edition: Zweitveröffentlichung
citation:   Gänger, Stefanie  (2025) 38°C: Fever, Thermometry, and the Coming into Being of a Global Norm, ca. 1868–1890.  Isis, 116 (1).  pp. 126-135.  ISSN 0021-1753 (Druck-Ausg.); 1545-6994 (Online-Ausg.)     
document_url: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/36111/7/Gaenger_38_degree_celsius_2025.pdf