Abstract And what, pray, asks a Shandean voice, is a Female Thermometer? The essayist Bonnell Thornton Till described this egregious device in The Connoisseur no. 85 (11 September 1754). Perfected by an “ingenious friend” Mr. Ayscough, the optician and scientific instrument-maker of Ludgate Hill, the “FEMALE THERMOMETER” Thornton wrote, was an invention for measuring “the exact temperature of a lady’s passions.” It consisted of a glass tube filled with a chemical mixture derived from distilled extracts oflady’s love and maiden hair and “wax of virgin-bees.” When acted on by “the circulation of the blood and animal spirits,” this liquor would invariably “rise and fall according to the desires and affections of the wearer.” Some ludicrous verse explained the principle: As the frail dame now love, now reason guides, The magic mixture rises or subsides.
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