Measuring Fire: Herman Boerhaave and the Introduction of Thermometry into Chemistry

This essay examines Herman Boerhaave's work with the instrument maker, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, on integrating the thermometer into the practice of eighteenth-century chemistry. Boerhaave utilized the thermometer to generate empirical evidence for the existence and actions of his instrument, "fire," by incorporating the instrument into pedagogical demonstrations, chemical research on heat, and, finally, the performing of operations. I examine how the use of the thermometer altered the chemists' traditional approach to heat, based on skilled sense perception and experiential judgment, and suggest that the threat to traditional practice posed by the instrument explains some of the resistance to it among some chemists in the mid-eighteenth century.