98.6 is not the normal and never was. it was found to be in a test in the 18.00's and thermometers were not accurate then.
any way normal is just under 98 like 97.8 or 9
It appears the thermometers were not that far off. From the innerwebz:
“What everybody grew up learning, which is that our normal temperature is 98.6, is wrong,” said
Dr. Julie Parsonnet, a professor of medicine as well as health research and policy at Stanford University School of Medicine.
The 98.6
°F standard was established by a German doctor in 1851. Recent studies have indicated that’s too high; research on 35,000 British people found their average was 97.9
°F.
Parsonnet’s
study published this week in eLife. It found that temperature changes since 1851 reflect a historical pattern instead of an error. They contend the decrease is the result of environmental changes over the past 200 years that have affected human physiology.
Parsonnet looked at data from 1862 through 1930, 1971 through 1975, and 2007 through 2017. It included 677,423 temperature measurements.
The body temperature of men born in the 2000s is 1.06°F degrees lower, on average, than men born in the early 1800s. Women have temps about 0.58°F lower than those born in the 1890s. That means body temperatures declined 0.05°F every decade.