Christopher Merret
FRSFRCP(16 February 1614/1615 – 19 August 1695), also spelt Merrett, was an
English physician and scientist. He was the first to document the deliberate addition of sugar for the production of
sparkling wine
Sparkling wine is a wine with significant levels of carbon dioxide in it, making it fizzy. While it is common to refer to this as champagne, European Union countries legally reserve that word for products exclusively produced in the Champagne ( ...
, and produced the first lists of British birds and butterflies.
Life
Merret was born in
Winchcombe
Winchcombe () is a market town and civil parish in the Borough of Tewkesbury in the county of Gloucestershire, England, situated northeast of Cheltenham. The population was recorded as 4,538 in the 2011 United Kingdom census, 2011 census and ...
,
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire ( , ; abbreviated Glos.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Herefordshire to the north-west, Worcestershire to the north, Warwickshire to the north-east, Oxfordshire ...
on 16 February; Hunter gives the year of his birth as 1615, which may be 1614
Old Style
Old Style (O.S.) and New Style (N.S.) indicate dating systems before and after a calendar change, respectively. Usually, they refer to the change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar as enacted in various European countries betwe ...
. In 1632 he
went up to
Gloucester Hall, Oxford (which later became Worcester College); he received his BA from
Oriel in 1635, and his BMed and DMed from Gloucester Hall in 1636 and 1643 respectively.
Merret then practised medicine in London, becoming
Fellowof the
Royal College of Physicians
The Royal College of Physicians of London, commonly referred to simply as the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), is a British professional membership body dedicated to improving the practice of medicine, chiefly through the accreditation of ph ...
in 1651. Three years later he moved to the RCP's premises at
Amen Corner near
St Paul's Cathedral
St Paul's Cathedral, formally the Cathedral Church of St Paul the Apostle, is an Anglican cathedral in London, England, the seat of the Bishop of London. The cathedral serves as the mother church of the Diocese of London in the Church of Engl ...
, as the first Harveian Librarian, for which he received room and board and a small stipend. But disaster struck in 1666 with the
Great Fire of London
The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through central London from Sunday 2 September to Wednesday 5 September 1666, gutting the medieval City of London inside the old London Wall, Roman city wall, while also extendi ...
, which destroyed many of the rooms and most of the books. The college felt that he was no longer needed, but he felt that he had been appointed for life and fought them before the King's Bench twice, losing both times. He was expelled from his rooms and lost his Fellowship.
He was a founding 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 ...
, joining May 20, 1663. He became the chairman of the Royal Society's committee concerned with the history of trade and commerce,
[Koinm, AJ (2000]
Christopher Merret's Use of Experiment
Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 54 (1), 23–32 (2000) but was expelled in 1685.
He died at his home near the chapel in
Hatton Garden, on 19 August 1695, and was buried at
St Andrew's, Holborn.
Naturalist
Merret collected new plants, maintained a herb garden and compiled one of the first lists of the flora, fauna and minerals of England, the ''Pinax Rerum Naturalium Britannicarum''. The ''Pinax'' was published in 1666 and is an alphabetical catalogue with no explanatory commentary.
However it represents the first lists of British birds and butterflies, and contains one of the first statements by an Englishman on the organic origin of fossils:
Metallurgy and glass making
Merret had a particular interest in industrial uses of minerals, publishing papers on
smelting
Smelting is a process of applying heat and a chemical reducing agent to an ore to extract a desired base metal product. It is a form of extractive metallurgy that is used to obtain many metals such as iron-making, iron, copper extraction, copper ...
and
tin
Tin is a chemical element; it has symbol Sn () and atomic number 50. A silvery-colored metal, tin is soft enough to be cut with little force, and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, a bar of tin makes a sound, the ...
mining. In 1662 he translated
Antonio Neri’s ''The Art of Glass'' (1611) and added 147 pages of his own, from other authors and his own observations.
His descriptions of glassmaking indicate an intimate familiarity with the process, but his modern claim to fame lies in a passing mention to a different field altogether. On 17 December 1662 he presented ''Some Observations concerning the Ordering of Wines'' to 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 ...
. In this paper, unearthed by wine writer Tom Stevenson, Merret describes winemakers adding quantities of sugar and molasses to make the wines drink brisk and sparkling.
[Mountain, Donna (2005]
Sounds of Summer: English wine, a quiet revolution
Transcript of ABC radio programme. Today this would be called the
méthode champenoise, the addition of
liqueur de tirage in order to stimulate a secondary fermentation that produces the bubbles in sparkling wine.
Spontaneous secondary fermentation had occurred in still wines since antiquity; most glass bottles of the time were not strong enough to contain the high pressures thus generated and so exploding bottles were an occupational hazard of winemaking. Sir Robert Mansell obtained a monopoly on glass production in England in the early 17th century and industrialised the process; his coal-powered factories in Newcastle upon Tyne produced much stronger bottles than were available in France. As a result, the English could deliberately induce a secondary fermentation in wine without the risk of blowing up the bottle, long before
Dom Pérignon
Dom Pérignon ( , ) is a brand of vintage Champagne. It is named after Dom Pérignon, a Benedictine monk who was an important quality pioneer for Champagne wine but who, contrary to popular myths, did not discover the Champagne method for makin ...
is traditionally considered to have invented sparkling wine in
Champagne
Champagne (; ) is a sparkling wine originated and produced in the Champagne wine region of France under the rules of the appellation, which demand specific vineyard practices, sourcing of grapes exclusively from designated places within it, spe ...
around 1697.
Although Merret appears to have been more interested in making glass than in making wine, producers of
English sparkling wine such as Ridgeview have been quick to use his name as a generic term to describe their wines.
Publications

*''The Art of Glass, wherein are shown the wayes to make and colour Glass, Pastes, Enamels, Lakes, and other Curiosities. Written in Italian by Antonio Neri, and translated into English, with some observations on the author''. Printed by Octavian Pulleyn, at the Sign of the Rose in St. Paul's Church-yard, London, 1662.
*''Pinax Rerum Naturalium Britannicarum, continens Vegetabilia, Animalia, et Fossilia''. Londini : Impensis Cave Pulleyn ad insigne Rosae in Coemeterio Divi Pauli, typis F. & T. Warren, 1666.
The following papers ascribed to Merret were published in the ''Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society'', although the last two were published in the year of his death and attributed to "Mr. Merret, Surveyor of the Port of Boston", which may have been his son Christopher.
*Observations concerning the uniting of barks of trees cut, to the tree itself. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. II, 453–454 (abridged version, III, 706).
*An experiment on ''Aloe Americana serrati-folia'' weighed; seeming to import a circulation of the sappe in plants. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. II, 455–457 (abridged version, II, 645–646).
*An experiment of making cherry-trees, that have withered fruit, to bear full and good fruit; and recovering the almost withered fruit. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. II, 455 (abridged version, II, 652)
*A relation of the tinn-mines, and working of tinn in the county of Cornwal. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. XII, 949–952.
*The art of refining. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. XII, 1046–1052.
*A description of several kinds of granaries, as those of London, of Dantzick, and in Muscovy. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. II, 464–467.
*An account of several observables in Lincolnshire, not taken notice of in Camden, or any other author. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. XIX, 343–353 (abridged version, III, 533).
*A table of the washes in Lincolnshire. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. XIX, 392 (abridged version, II, 267).
References
Further reading
*Dodds, C. (1954
Christopher Merrett, F.R.C.P. (1614-1695), First Harveian Librarian''Proc R Soc Med.'' 1954 December; 47(12): 1053–1056. Old but detailed account of Merret's time at the RCP.
British Birds
External links
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Inspiring physicians biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Merret, Christopher
1610s births
1695 deaths
Original fellows of the Royal Society
Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians
Alumni of Gloucester Hall, Oxford
Alumni of Oriel College, Oxford
17th-century English naturalists
English ornithologists