chemist
A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe th ...
, physician, and
physiologist
Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical a ...
who is remembered today for conducting early research into respiration and the nature of air. Mayow worked in a field that is sometimes called
pneumatic chemistry
In the history of science, pneumatic chemistry is an area of scientific research of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries. Important goals of this work were the understanding of the physical properties of gases and how the ...
.
Life
There has been controversy over both the location and year of Mayow's birth, with both
Cornwall
Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic ...
and London claimed, along with birth years from 1641 to 1645. Proctor's extensive research led him to conclude that Mayow was born in 1641 near Morval in Cornwall and that he was admitted to
Wadham College, Oxford
Wadham College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is located in the centre of Oxford, at the intersection of Broad Street and Parks Road.
Wadham College was founded in 1610 by Dorothy W ...
at age 17 in 1658. A year later Mayow became a scholar at Oxford, and in 1660 he was elected to a fellowship at All Souls. He graduated in law (bachelor, 1665, doctor, 1670), but made medicine his profession, and became noted for his practice therein, especially in the summer time, in the city of Bath. In 1678, on the proposal of
Robert Hooke
Robert Hooke FRS (; 18 July 16353 March 1703) was an English polymath active as a scientist, natural philosopher and architect, who is credited to be one of two scientists to discover microorganisms in 1665 using a compound microscope that ...
, Mayow was appointed a fellow of the
Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
. The following year, after a marriage which was not altogether to Mayow's content, he died in London and was buried in the Church of St Paul, Covent Garden.
Scientific work
Mayow also discovered that there were two constituents of air. Inactive and active. Mayow published at Oxford in 1668 two tracts, on
respiration
Respiration may refer to:
Biology
* Cellular respiration, the process in which nutrients are converted into useful energy in a cell
** Anaerobic respiration, cellular respiration without oxygen
** Maintenance respiration, the amount of cellul ...
and
rickets
Rickets is a condition that results in weak or soft bones in children, and is caused by either dietary deficiency or genetic causes. Symptoms include bowed legs, stunted growth, bone pain, large forehead, and trouble sleeping. Complications may ...
, and in 1674 these were reprinted, the former in an enlarged and corrected form, with three others ''De sal-nitro et spiritu nitro-aereo'', ''De respiratione foetus in utero et ovo'', and ''De motu musculari et spiritibus animalibus'' as ''Tractatus quinque medico-physici''. The contents of this work, which was several times republished and translated into
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
, German and French, show him to have been an investigator much in advance of his time.
Accepting as proved by
Boyle
Boyle is an English, Irish and Scottish surname of Gaelic, Anglo-Saxon or Norman origin. In the northwest of Ireland it is one of the most common family names. Notable people with the surname include:
Disambiguation
*Adam Boyle (disambiguation), ...
's experiments that air is necessary for
combustion
Combustion, or burning, is a high-temperature exothermic redox chemical reaction between a fuel (the reductant) and an oxidant, usually atmospheric oxygen, that produces oxidized, often gaseous products, in a mixture termed as smoke. Combusti ...
, Mayow showed that fire is supported not by the air as a whole but by a more active and subtle part of it. This part he called "spiritus igneo-aereus," or sometimes "nitro-aereus", for he identified it with one of the constituents of the
acid
In computer science, ACID ( atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability) is a set of properties of database transactions intended to guarantee data validity despite errors, power failures, and other mishaps. In the context of databases, a sequ ...
portion of
nitre
Niter or nitre is the mineral form of potassium nitrate, KNO3. It is a soft, white, highly soluble mineral found primarily in arid climates or cave deposits.
Historically, the term ''niter'' was not well differentiated from natron, both of w ...
(now called potassium nitrate, KNO3) which he regarded as formed by the union of fixed
alkali
In chemistry, an alkali (; from ar, القلوي, al-qaly, lit=ashes of the saltwort) is a basic, ionic salt of an alkali metal or an alkaline earth metal. An alkali can also be defined as a base that dissolves in water. A solution of a ...
with a spiritus acidus. In combustion the particulae nitro-aereae – either pre-existent in the thing consumed or supplied by the air – combined with the material burnt; as Mayow inferred from his observation that antimony, strongly heated with a burning glass, undergoes an increase of weight which can be attributed to nothing else but these particles.
Mayow argued that the same particles are consumed in respiration, because he found that when a small animal and a lighted candle were placed in a closed vessel full of air the candle first went out and soon afterwards the animal died. However, if there was no candle present the animal lived twice as long. He concluded that this constituent of the air is absolutely necessary for life, and supposed that the
lungs
The lungs are the primary organs of the respiratory system in humans and most other animals, including some snails and a small number of fish. In mammals and most other vertebrates, two lungs are located near the backbone on either side of th ...
separate it from the atmosphere and pass it into the blood. It is also necessary, Mayow inferred, for all muscular movements, and he thought there was reason to believe that the sudden contraction of
muscle
Skeletal muscles (commonly referred to as muscles) are organs of the vertebrate muscular system and typically are attached by tendons to bones of a skeleton. The muscle cells of skeletal muscles are much longer than in the other types of muscl ...
is produced by its combination with other combustible (salino-sulphureous) particles in the body; hence the
heart
The heart is a muscular organ in most animals. This organ pumps blood through the blood vessels of the circulatory system. The pumped blood carries oxygen and nutrients to the body, while carrying metabolic waste such as carbon dioxide t ...
, being a muscle, ceases to beat when respiration is stopped. Animal heat also is due to the union of nitro-aerial particles, breathed in from the air, with the combustible particles in the blood, and is further formed by the combination of these two sets of particles in muscle during violent exertion.
In effect, therefore, Mayow – who also gives a remarkably correct anatomical description of the mechanism of respiration – preceded
Priestley
Priestley may refer to:
Places
* Priestley, West Virginia, US, an unincorporated community
* Priestley Glacier, a major valley glacier in Antarctica
* Priestley (lunar crater), on the far side of the Moon
* Priestley (Martian crater)
* 5577 P ...
and
Lavoisier
Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier ( , ; ; 26 August 17438 May 1794), CNRS (
oxygen
Oxygen is the chemical element with the symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group in the periodic table, a highly reactive nonmetal, and an oxidizing agent that readily forms oxides with most elements as wel ...
, under the guise of his "spiritus nitro-aereus," as a separate entity distinct from the general mass of the air. Mayow perceived the part "spiritus nitro-aereus" plays in combustion and in increasing the weight of the calces (oxides) of metals as compared with metals themselves. Rejecting the common notions of his time that the use of breathing is to cool the heart, or assist the passage of the blood from the right to the left side of the heart, or merely to agitate it, Mayow saw in inspiration a mechanism for introducing oxygen into the body, where it is consumed for the production of heat and muscular activity. He even vaguely conceived of expiration as an excretory process. Using bell-jars over water Mayow showed that the active substance that we today call oxygen constitutes about a fifth part of the air.
Parts of Mayow's work seem to agree with modern ideas regarding air and combustion. Mayow noted, as had others before him, that some materials gain weight on strong heating. Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794) and others later interpreted this gain in terms of a reaction with a gaseous material (oxygen) in the air. See Holmyard and others for critiques of Mayow's work and comparisons to modern chemical thought.
Honours
*
Fellow of the Royal Society
Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...