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.
The German physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686 1736) came first. In 1714, he invented the mercury-in-glass thermometer that 300 years on is still one of the most accurate and most widely used means of measuring temperature.