No Red Line On Rectal Thermometer

My partner and I recently ordered some glass rectal thermometers on eBay (Fulton Rectal Clinical Thermometer). We'd ordered some before and there was no colored line in the middle, so it wasn't measuring my temperature. We've been having this issue with the new ones too - no matter how much we turn the thermometer, there is no colored line in the middle that would rise when measuring temperature, only a kind of whitish line. (Picture and video at this link: imgur.com/a/JZD3dic) Are we doing this wrong? Any advice? How can we get it to actually measure temperature? Is it just defective and we need to order another one? In that case, any suggestions for where to find old-fashioned glass rectal thermometers?

You are looking at it wrong. You need to look at it from the top down. The white stripe is the bottom side of the thermometer. Look down on it inbetween the number side and the hash marks side. It will be a silver line of mercury. Remember, these thermometers need to be shook down, so the bar may be maxed out if it got warm in shipping. Shake it from the opposite end of the silver bulb, and hang on to it good!

@RTneo

Thank you so much for your help. The line in my childhood thermometer was red and much more clearly visible, so I got confused when I didn’t see that. Thanks to you, I’m all set for lots of temp checks and spankings 😉

Glad you got it worked out enjoy your new thermometers dear.

You can see the silver line flash past just for an instant toward the end of the video GIF 😃