To the Editor: —Cases are on record in which people in hospitals for the insane have swallowed all kinds of junk and also cases in which children have accidentally swallowed small articles of hardware, but I find no record showing that anybody ever swallowed a clinical thermometer. The patient in question, a white man about 60, was in the Mattie Hersee Hospital suffering from an attack of malaria. While the nurse was taking his temperature, the patient says, he momentarily fell asleep and swallowed the thermometer. The nurse was afraid to say anything about it, but at the end of thirty-six hours, very much to her delight, it was passed from the bowels, registering 104 F.