iv: Anthroposophical Views
An inner glow Dora Wagner
When life hands you lemons, make lemonade. Attributed to Elbert Hubbard, 1915
The Dictionary of German Superstition defines fever as 'a healing process...sen[t] by demons', a 'wild movement' that has 'to run riot'. Fever has long been depicted as an elusive phenomenon, possibly involving supernatural forces (Stäubli, 1929). Yet it is so familiar to us that we use the term not only to describe a rise in body temperature, but as a metaphor for crisis, increased excitement, exaggerated tension, or passionate desire. Until the 19th century, patients described 'flying heat', 'flushes', 'relapses', 'terrible heat', and 'great fire'. Humoral pathological concepts, according to which fever and heat arose from bodily fluids accumulating in the wrong places and spoiling, were still common until the early 20th century. Internal heat was understood as linked to the external cooling of the body. Thus, warmth was primarily used against fever and heat, with various complex and by no means harmless applications. The first clinical thermometers date back to Daniel Fahrenheit and were difficult to handle. They typically measured about sixty centimetres, were slow to display results, and many healers who relied on intuition and their senses opposed 'objective' measurement by apparatus (Kucklick, 2017). In 1791, for example, de Grimaud argued the exact value
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of temperature was much less important than 'the acrid and irritating quality of feverish heat', and advised his French colleagues: The physician must above all endeavour to distinguish between qualities in the heat of the fever which can only be perceived by a very experienced sense (de Grimaud, 1791). This changed in the 1860s, when fever began to be recognised as a symptom of disease, rather than a disease in itself. In 1867, Thomas Allbutt invented the short clinical thermometer, allowing temperature readings to be taken by caregivers and interpreted by a doctor (O'Connor, 1991). Together with pulse and blood pressure, the regular monitoring of body temperature now forms part of our complex patient surveillance. Isn't it a miracle how, despite varying ambient temperatures, the human organism efficiently maintains an average temperature of 37°C, give or take 0.5°C? It always comes as a surprise, then, when that inner glow rises through our body and fever occurs. These processes are controlled by a thermoregulation centre in the brain. Inflammatory substances released by pathogens trigger this inner guardian, which is prompted to raise our body temperature. This
