The Measuring Instruments

Abstract

AbstractAs the title suggests, this chapter deals with the most famous of the devices which Sanctorius developed to measure and to quantify physiological change: pulsilogia, thermoscopes, hygrometers, and balances. Having attracted considerable scholarly attention, they form the backbone of the narrative that identifies Sanctorius as a great innovator, who founded a new medical science, a science to which mechanization, measurement, and numerical values were integral. The findings of the foregoing chapters allow us now to go beyond this selective account of Sanctorius and his works and to reevaluate his celebrated measuring instruments and their use from a closer perspective. To this end, I explore their design and basic functioning, the contexts in which they emerged, how Sanctorius possibly used them, and what precisely they measured. In this connection, I also analyze two steelyards for the measurement of climatic conditions which have hitherto been largely ignored, thereby covering the whole range of Sanctorius’s measuring instruments. Moreover, I present the results of my reconstruction of the Sanctorian weighing chair and the attendant replication of his experimental practice, and thereby show how this approach opened up new perspectives on Sanctorius’s works, his doctrine of static medicine, and the function and purpose of his weighing chair.