Difficult choices as death nears. As the changes described in this article develop in the final days or hours of a progressive terminal illness, difficult choices may arise. There may be questions about whether to provide food and fluids, receive blood transfusions, or treat infections.
The use of mercury in thermometers dates back hundreds of years. It was widely used because it reliably expands and contracts with changes in temperatures. It is highly poisonous, however, and can enter the body through the respiratory or digestive tracts, or directly through the skin.
That is why you shake a mercury medical thermometer before and after you use it, to reconnect the mercury and get the thermometer to return to room temperature. Mouth Thermometers. In 1612, the Italian inventor Santorio Santorio invented the mouth thermometer and perhaps the first crude clinical thermometer.