The weather and diseases : some eighteenth-century contributions to observational meteorology

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Abstract
Students of the history of science are well aware how rapidly ideas were exchanged, remembering the available means of communication, during the years immediately preceding and following the foundation of the Royal Society. This is very evident in regard to meteorological observation and measurement. Robert Hooke’s daily readings of temperature and rainfall in 1664 are well known and he, with Locke soon afterwards, was quick to stress the need for comparable observations in different places. Accordingly, we in England possess some remarkably early series of records ; of temperature, for example, at Wrentham in Suffolk (1673-1674), and, of course, Towneley’s well-known rainfall record near Burnley (1677-1704). Gadbury kept a very useful diary in London (1669-1689) and while his instrumental observations were few, there is a consistency about his daily recording which accords well with the spirit of the age and that consciousness of time which became so evident not only in the social diarists but among the craftsmen such as Tompion with his clocks. Zeal with regard to maintenance of consistent daily observations has always been very variable. For example, in 1694, Ralph Thoresby, F.R.S., while on one of his journeys visited Towneley and much admired his work ; but in his diary he enters that he ‘ had a mind to do likewise, but bethought myself of the tediousness of it ’. Thomas Short of Sheffield in 1749 also commented on the many who began a record but were prone to let it lapse. Prolonged maintenance of daily observations demands an odd and uncommon type of enthusiasm which at intervals has been roused into activity. Perusal of our older records leads one to think that the initial impetus died down about 1710 ; for no English instrumental records of a continuous kind survive, as far as we know, for the period 1716-1722.

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