A New Technic for the Measurement of Average Skin Temperature over Surfaces of the Body and the Changes of Skin Temperature During Exercise

Abstract

A technic is described, adaptable for continuous recording, which gives directly the average skin temperature over an extended area such as that of the trunk, with very little disturbance of normal conditions. A considerable length of fine insulated nickel wire is fixed by sewing to the inside of a jacket of light ganze or cloth, so that it is held in close contact with the skin of the subject. Its resistance is balanced in a Wheatstone bridge against a coil of fixed resistance, or against a similarly constructed resistance of nickel wire which is kept at room temperature. Deflection of the galvanometer records in the first case the level of the skin temperature, or in the second case, the excess temperature between skin and room. The use of the method is illustrated by experiments on the skin temperature of a subject doing muscular work on a bicycle ergometer.