Old Nursing Texts and Rectal Temperatures

Does anyone else like reading through old (pre 1980s) nursing text books for directions of how and when to take rectal temperatures?

They were a lot more matter of a fact about using rectal thermometers and much quicker to recommend their routine use in adults in a variety. Using rectal temperatures instead of oral in patients with breathing difficulty or on oxygen seemed to be a common solution.

They seemed to be less prudish and more concerned with getting a reliable reading.

Here are few examples that I came across.

The Health Aide by Jane Henry Stolten, RN, from 1972 says

“A rectal temperature is always taken when there is any interference with a person’s ability to breath, when a patient is confused, and on a child.”

I can just imagine coming in with a heavy cough.

It also has a section on the care of psychiatric patients and recommends only rectal temperatures:

“TPR

Rectal temperatures are taken on psychotic patients. The attendant remains with the patient and holds the thermometer while it is inserted. Disturbed patients are apt to bite mouth thermometers.”

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The Fundamentals of Nursing and the Sciences in Nursing, Fifth Edition from 1974 says that “A rectal temperature is more accurate than an oral or axillary temperature.”

It also recommends taking a rectal temperature if an oral temperature shows a considerable change. And that “Some hospitals require rectal readings on patients having an elevated temperature.”

It also says that oral temperatures are contraindicated in patients receiving nasal oxygen therapy.

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In the 4th edition of The Medical Office Assistant administrative and clinical from 1974 it says “Rectal temperatures are taken on the very young patient, the patient with breathing difficulty, the uncooperative patient, and the unconscious patient.”

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The Illustrated Manual of Nursing Techniques, has multiple pictures in the Techniques for Adult Clients showing the preparing of the thermometer, spreading the buttocks, inserting the thermometer, and holding it in place. It is all very matter of a fact and natural.

"the uncooperative patient"

Oh my! Better not act up! (or um, well, DO act up)

Thanks very much for this very thorough review. It is much appreciated

I used to love going to the library and looking at medical and nursing books. I enjoyed the diagrams and, particularly, the explicit photos of male private parts. I would get turned on by reading the detailed step-by-step instructions on how to take rectal temperatures of adults, especially if the pronouns used were "him" and "his".

One day when I was about age of 10 I found a medical book at aunt's home. There were detailed illustrated descriptions of how to take RT, administering suppositories and enemas from infants to adult age. That time I realized why we have to drop down our underwear or stripped by mom/aunt so often to submit ourselves to these procedures.

When I was a kid there was no internet and we didn't even have cable so the opportunities for viewing sexual imagery were limited. I used to go to the local library and browse. I found a childcare book written by a former Miss South Carolina in which she described how she cared for her five girls. She said she took her daughters' temperatures rectally and even took her own rectal temperature when sick. As a 13 year old, I fantasized a lot about Miss South Carolina with a thermometer up her butt. The book was published around 1980.

Circa mid- late 50s there was an educational show , a forerunner of many similar themed shows in the 70s that came out of Chicago, called “Ding Fong School” which was live. I think the host’s name was Miss Frances. I could be most.

One episode geared toward new mothers featured a nurse demonstrating the way to take a rectal temperature on a young child. She had brought a young child in ( I believe from a foundling hospital) and went through the actual procedure on the child.

Her name was Frances Horwich ( Ding Dong School)

I like reading them

Mom had one or two in her home library but the one I remember most was the doctor Spock baby book, it was a hard back and it had a gray cover on it. 📕

I saw a collection of world book encyclopedias from the 60’s, and I looked up the subject of rectal temperature. It stated that the best place to take a temperature is in the rectum, and it mentioned using vegetable oil, or petroleum jelly as a lubricant, for “ ease of insertion, and the comfort of the patient.” I got sexually excited after reading that.

I never heard the one about using vegetable oil, although I have heard about using cold cream or Noxzema

Dr. Spock was everyone’s medical handbook.

Doctor Spock was the child care expert of the time. So I guess if you did not do it his way, you were questionable? I was a bed wetter and doctor Spock"s advise was not to use diapers on an older child 4+.

Many suffered waking up in cold wet beds because of his advise. Being afflicted with something most could not help. I am happy that my mom choose to go the route of diapers. It was something she had to do at the time because she worked two jobs, and was a single mom. Very unusual at the time.

I was born in the 1970s. I don't know where she got this idea, was it in a child-rearing book or some other home medicine book, but mom considered rectal to be the only reliable method. So if I had a headache or other symptoms of possible fever, up the behind it went - under a certain age mom inserted it, and then later I was made to insert it.

I once read the instruction leaflet that came with one thermometer in the household and saw it could be used in the mouth, rectum or armpit, but mom only allowed the rectal route. (Besides, even though the thermometer was cleaned with alcohol after each use, I'm unsure it would have been appropriate to use it orally after it's been in all rectums in the family.)

My grandparents had a baby book that I imagine was from the 1960s, and it included detailed instructions on how to take a rectal temperature (which was the method they recommended, at least for babies- I don't remember if this was the book that said to switch to oral when the child was four or five to minimize the potential for embarrassment) and two photographs- the photographs were of more interest to me than the text as a child. The first showed a baby on its back with its legs in the air and a thermometer seconds away from insertion, and the other showed a baby face down with the thermometer in place. I was always bewildered that they were clearly two different babies- I didn't understand why they would have one mother pretend to take her baby's temperature and then another mother actually take her baby's temperature, rather than just having the same woman reposition her baby and insert the thermometer. Looking back, I realize that with film cameras, the authors may have just done multiple photoshoots for different sections of the book and then picked through the final images to see which came out the best, and it happened that these two images were the most usable. As a child looking at the book, I was somehow convinced that the two babies had been next to each other (like the two pictures) and that one baby just had to pose while the other actually had its temperature taken, which I thought was unfair to the second baby (since it was crying and seemed uncomfortable in the picture). Now that I'm thinking about it logically, I imagine both babies were used for multiple sections of the book, and the first probably didn't escape actually having a temperature taken at some point in the process.

My mother had book called home doctor published between wars 1936 in that instructions for rt up to age 8 at lest older if danger biting thermometer with cough or sneezing also stated rectal was most accurate way even in adults

Love reading the old nursing books and love looking at the pictures and have went to the library a few times and spent hours just looking at the old nursing books and it's pictures

My grandmother on my mom‘s side had a booklet that I think was printed in the early 1930s. It was for patients being cared for in a sanitarium, explaining protocol.

There was a section titled The Ill Patient that had a sentence something like “upon awakening, a rectal temperature is taken and repeated during the day as ordered.”

I was eight or nine years old, but I still remember. I’d love to find that booklet, but it’s long gone.

It is good to know that we have moved on from those days now that medical knowledge has advanced somewhat

My mother's pediatric nursing textbooks from the 1970s became secretive, favorite night time reads of mine in junior high. The mention of RT was prevalent in the books, naturally, along with a variety of other intimate, painful or at least embarassing medical procedures. It is pretty safe to say that my medfet interests of today can be traced back to those books, whicb I suspect were donated many years ago.

I love reading about the ways nursing was done before 1990