A brief history of rectal temperatures
Because someone had to write it.
The lowly rectal temperature.
It’s been a dreaded component of medical encounters, a new parent’s worst nightmare and the inspiration (don’t say butt … don’t say butt…) for countless stand-up comedy routines. Historically it doesn’t appear to date as far back as one would imagine. After all, the first mercury thermometers were a foot long and took about twenty minutes to register. It wasn’t until the turn of the 19th century that Dr Charles Allbutt (no, I’m not making that up) patented a practical-to-use clinical thermometer.
Preferred sites then were the mouth or axilla (armpit). The rectum was considered, but it’s likely that not enough studies had been done at that point to support its reliability. And, anyway, it wasn’t most people’s first choice.
Rectal temps seem to have come into widespread use shortly before or during the Second World War. William Manchester, for example, in his memoir of the Pacific Theater, Goodbye Darkness, recounts having his rectal temp checked by a corpsman (whether that was for the sake of accuracy, policy or due to his injuries is not made clear) while being invalidated…
