Yesterday I was riding home from church with some kids who were cramming for their Pathfinders first aid test. (Pathfinders is a church program similar to Scouts.) "The vital signs are ...?" "Temperature, pulse, breathing - what's the other one?" "You take the pulse at the ...?" "One's the carotid, the other is - " She touched her wrist but didn't know what to call it. "Radial artery," I supplied, remembering a phrase from The Andromeda Strain. "Pero no zanahorias", I punned. "What's a fever?" She listed a range of temperatures in Fahrenheit. "What's normal in Celsius?" I asked. She didn't know, so I told her.
Why is the teacher, who is Nicaraguan if I remember right, teaching this Colombian girl a temperature scale which we Americans decided over thirty years ago to give up? Pierre
