How to Use a Mercury Thermometer

Video Transcript

"You're interested to know how to use a mercury thermometer. A mercury thermometer has been the main stay for taking temperatures for years and years. My name is Beverly Bitterman ARNP, health and wellness consultant. And I'm going to tell you how to use this mercury thermometer. You see here it's I don't know, three or four inches long. The temperature you can read it, it's it's along the side of the thermometer and it actually has mercury. The silver tip is filled with mercury. Its housing is glass too so it's safe unless it breaks and we'll talk about that in a minute. What you want to do before you use the thermometer is to what we call shake it down. And you, you go like this. And it's a little flick of the wrist kind of deal and you're mechanically moving the mercury from this end of the thermometer down to the bulb end. And you want to make sure you've shaken it down below, probably below 97 degrees would be ideal. Now the thing with the mercury thermometer it's its nice versatile instrument. It can be used under the tongue, that's an ideal place to use it but a child probably needs to be three or four years of age to use it there. You can also use it under the arm and in babies you can use it rectally. Often people will have thermometer for rectal use just or obvious reasons and one for oral use although you would want to clean the thermometer with soap and water, soap and cold water in any case. Now you're, let's say you're going to take it, the temperature under the tongue. You've shaken it down, you put it underneath the tongue all the way in like that and you get the person to hold their mouth shut. They need to do that for about two minutes. If you're doing it under the arm it can take a little bit longer, maybe three minutes. Rectally maybe, two minutes is probably still a good idea. If you're going to use it rectally then you're going to put a little lubricant KY jelly or Vaseline on the tip of it and and put it in generally a child's bottom, and they're laying on their dressing table or the counter or on your lap, that's a good way. Once you think the thermometer is done then you turn the thermometer so you can see the mercury and you read where is it on the dial. 98 6 is normal orally. 97 6 is is normal under your arm. And 99 6 is normal rectally. So you have a fever in either of those places if the temperatures higher than that. If you should break the thermometer what you need to do is not touch the mercury with your hand, you want to use gloves. My name is Beverly Bitterman ARNP, health and wellness consultant."