Irish Famine (1740–41) affect economies, energy sources, and politics. Although no barometric or temperature readings for Ireland survive from the Great Frost, a scattered few records survive from Englishmen who made personal readings. The mercury thermometer was invented 25 years earlier by the German pioneer Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit. Indoor values during January 1740 were as low as . The one outdoor reading that has survived was stated as "thirty-two degrees of frost." This did not include the effects of the wind chill factor, which would have been severe. This kind of weather was "quite outside the Irish experience," notes David Dickson, author of
Medical thermometer the "Académie des sciences, belles-lettres et arts de Lyon", developed a similar scale in which "0" represented the freezing point of water and "100" represented boiling. On 19 May 1743 he published the design of a mercury thermometer, the "Thermometer of Lyon" built by the craftsman Pierre Casati that used this scale. The medical thermometer was used by Dutch chemist and physician Hermann Boerhaave (1668–1738), as well as his notable students Gerard van Swieten (1700–72) and Anton de Haen (1704–76). It was also utilized around the same time by Scottish physician George Martine (1700–1741). De Haen made particular strides in