"Sourdough Thermometer"
Jack McQuesten invented the "Sourdough Thermometer" which became famous all through the north in the early 1880's.
He developed the idea during the start of the Fortymile gold camp. The thermometer consisted of a row of four bottles, each containing either quick-silver, coal oil, an extract of Jamaica ginger or Perry Davis' Painkiller.
They would be placed outside the cabin in a location where they could be seen from thh window. If the mercury froze it was nearly 40 degrees below zero. The coal oil froze at -50 degress. The ginger at -60 degrees. And if the painkiller finally froze too, it was unsafe to travel very far from a fire because the temperature was then as low as 70 degrees below zero.
The popular patent medicine of those days -- Perry Davis' Painkiller -- turned white at -60 degrees, crystallized at -70 and froze solid at -75.
Most stayed home when the mercury (quicksilver) froze. It was an effective way of gauging the cold in the remote north country where thermometers were few or nonexistant. Laura Beatrice Berton, travelling from Whitehorse to Dawson in winter by stage, noticed painkiler bottles set outside roadhouse windows as thermometers. The stage driver would not leave the roadhouse if the painkiller had frozen to slush.
The following is a comment by "Stroller" White, an early Dawson and Whitehorse newspaper writer and columnist, regarding Perry Davis' painkiller and ice worms:
"Where Perry Davis' painkiller has remained frozen for a period of seven weeks at a time, ice worms have been known to attain a growth of 27 inches. These are much sought after by the Indians who eat them raw with Snyder's Ketchup." (Dawson Weekly News, Oct. 15, 1909)
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