Body Heat

Abstract

So wrote James Currie in his book entitled Medical Reports on the Effects of Water as a Remedy in Fever and Other Diseases. If ever a justification was needed for research into body temperature regulation and into the mode of action of drugs affecting body temperature then it is contained in those two paragraphs.

If a definition of life were required, it might be most clearly established on that capacity, by which the animal preserves its proper heat under the various degrees of temperature of the medium in which it lives. The most perfect animals possess this power in a superior degree, and to the exercise of their vital functions this is necessary. The inferior animals have it in a lower degree, in a degree however suited to their functions. In vegetables it seems to exist, but in a degree still lower, according to their more limited powers, and humbler destination …

There is reason to believe, that while the actual temperature of the human body remains unchanged, its health is not permanently interrupted by the variation in the temperature of the medium that surrounds it; but that a few degrees of increase or diminution of the heat of the system, produces disease and death. A knowledge therefore of the laws which regulate the vital heat, seems to be the most important branch of physiology.

James Currie, 1808