John Mayow 1177384 223514302 2008-07-04T11:51:44Z DOI bot 6652755 Citation maintenance. Added: month. Formatted: title, author, journal, issn, pmid, doi. You can [[WP:DOI|use this bot]] yourself! Please [[User:DOI_bot/bugs|report any bugs]]. {{Infobox Scientist |name = John Mayow |box_width = |image =John Mayow.jpg |image_width =150px |caption = John Mayow |birth_date = [[24 May]] [[1640]] |birth_place = |death_date = October 1679 |death_place = [[London]] |residence = |citizenship = |nationality = [[England]] |ethnicity = |field = [[chemistry]] |work_institutions = |alma_mater = |doctoral_advisor = |doctoral_students = |known_for = [[pneumatic chemistry]] |author_abbrev_bot = |author_abbrev_zoo = |influences = |influenced = |prizes = |religion = |footnotes = |signature = }} '''John Mayow''' [[Royal Society|FRS]] (1641 - 1679) was a [[chemist]], [[physician]], and [[physiologist]] 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]]. == Life == There has been controversy over both the location and year of Mayow's birth, with both [[Cornwall]] 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]] at age 17 in 1658.<ref>{{cite book | author = Proctor, Donald F. | title = A History of Breathing Physiology | year = 1995 | location = New York | publisher = Marcel Dekker, Inc. | url = http://books.google.com/books?id=1YTaHPKHonkC&printsec=titlepage&dq=john+mayow+birth&source=gbs_toc_s&cad=1#PPP1,M1 | access-date = 2008-02-11 }} </ref> A year later Mayow became a scholar at Oxford, and in 1660 he was elected to a fellowship at [[All Souls College, Oxford|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, Somerset|Bath]]. In 1678, on the proposal of [[Robert Hooke]], Mayow was chosen a fellow of the [[Royal Society]]. 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.<ref>{{cite book | author = Wood, A. A. |title = Athenae Oxonienses. An Exact History of all the Writers and Bishops who Have Had Their Education in the University of Oxford | publisher = FCJ Rivington | place = London = volume III | year = 1817 | page = 1199}} </ref> == Scientific work == Mayow published at Oxford in 1668 two tracts, on [[Respiration (physiology)|respiration]] and [[rickets]], 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 language|Dutch]], [[German language|German]] and [[French language|French]], show him to have been an investigator much in advance of his time. [[Image:Mayow John burning expt.jpg|thumb|right|Equipment used by Mayow in experiments on burning]] Accepting as proved by [[Robert Boyle|Boyle]]'s experiments that air is necessary for [[combustion]], 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]] portion of [[nitre]] (now called potassium nitrate, KNO<sub>3</sub>) which he regarded as formed by the union of fixed [[alkali]] with a spiritus acidus. In combustion the particulae nitro-aereae &ndash; either pre-existent in the thing consumed or supplied by the air &ndash; 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]] 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]] is produced by its combination with other combustible (salino-sulphureous) particles in the body; hence the [[heart]], 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 &ndash; who also gives a remarkably correct anatomical description of the mechanism of respiration &ndash; preceded [[Joseph Priestley|Priestley]] and [[Antoine Lavoisier|Lavoisier]] by a century in recognizing the existence of [[oxygen]], 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 seems 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<ref>{{cite book | last = Holmyard | first = Eric John | coauthors = | title = Makers of Chemistry | publisher = Oxford University Press | date = 1931 | location = Oxford | pages = 154 &ndash; 158 }}</ref> and others<ref>{{cite book | last = Hudson | first = John | title = The History of Chemistry | publisher = Chapman and Hall | date = 1992 | location = New York | pages = 44 &ndash; 46 }}</ref> for critiques of Mayow's work and comparisons to modern chemical thought. == Honours == * [[Royal Society|Fellow of the Royal Society]] (1678) == References == <references /> == Further reading == *{{Citation |id = [[PMID]]:13366533 |url= http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13366533 |last=PARTINGTON |first=J R |publication-date=1956 Sep |year=1956 |title=The life and work of John Mayow (1641-1679) |volume=47 |issue=149 |periodical=Isis; an international review devoted to the history of science and its cultural influences |pages=217–30 }} *{{Citation |id = [[PMID]]:14430648 |url= http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14430648 |last=PARTINGTON |first=J R |publication-date=1959 Sep |year=1959 |title=Some early appraisals of the work of John Mayow |volume=50 |issue= |periodical=Isis; an international review devoted to the history of science and its cultural influences |pages=211–26 }} *{{Citation |id = [[PMID]]:13870464 |url= http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13870464 |last=BOEHM |first=W |publication-date=1962 Mar |year=1962 |title=[John Mayow and Descartes.] |volume=46 |issue= |periodical=Sudhoffs Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften |pages=45–68 }} *{{Citation |id = [[PMID]]:15050753 |url= http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15050753 |last=Sternbach |first=George L |last2=Varon |first2=Joseph |publication-date=2004 Mar |year=2004 |title=Resuscitation Great. John Mayow and oxygen |volume=60 |issue=3 |periodical=Resuscitation |pages=235–7 |doi = 10.1016/j.resuscitation.2003.12.013 |journal=Resuscitation }} *{{Citation |id = [[PMID]]:5329985 |url= http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/5329985 |publication-date=1966 Aug 1 |year=1966 |title=John Mayow (1641-1679) |volume=197 |issue=5 |periodical=[[Journal of the American Medical Association|JAMA]] |pages=364–5 |month = Aug |author = , |issn = 0098-7484 |pmid = 5329985 |journal = JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association |doi = 10.1001/jama.197.5.364b }} * {{cite journal | author = Beringer, J. J. | title = John Mayow: Chemist and Physician | journal = Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall | volume = IX | year = 1886 &ndash; 1899 | pages = 319 &ndash; 324 | url = http://books.google.com/books?id=10MBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA319&lpg=PA319&dq=john+mayow+born&source=web&ots=7sHXjQzmSU&sig=h-UI3-W_Se3oNC_QgC3Ah19RH5I#PPA319,M1 | access-date = 2008-02-12}} * {{cite journal | author = [[Crum Brown|Crum Brown, Alexander]] | title = Dr. John Mayow: The Harveian Oration for 1899 | journal = Edinburgh Medical Journal | volume = 6 | year = 1899 | pages = 116 &ndash; 129 | url = http://books.google.com/books?id=23wBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA116&dq=John+Mayow&as_brr=1#PPA116,M1 | access-date = 2008-02-10}} * {{cite book | author = Mayow, John | title = Medico-physical Works: Being a Translation of Tractatus Quinque Medico-physici | year = 1908 | location = Edinburgh | publisher = The Alembic Club | url = http://www.openlibrary.org/details/medicophysicalwo00mayouoft | access-date = 2008-02-11 }} : - The above originally was published in 1674. * {{cite book | author = Proctor, Donald F. | title = A History of Breathing Physiology | year = 1995 | location = New York | publisher = Marcel Dekker, Inc. | url = http://books.google.com/books?id=1YTaHPKHonkC&printsec=titlepage&dq=john+mayow+birth&source=gbs_toc_s&cad=1#PPP1,M1 | access-date = 2008-02-11 }} : - See especially chapters 7 - 9 on Mayow's life, work, and influence. * {{cite journal | last = Sternbach | first = George L. | coauthors = Joesph Varon | title = John Mayow and Oxygen | year = 2004 | journal = Resuscitation | volume = 60 | issue = 3 | pages = 235 &ndash; 237 | url = http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T19-4BT1DGN-3&_user=2744497&_coverDate=03%2F31%2F2004&_rdoc=2&_fmt=summary&_orig=browse&_srch=doc-info(%23toc%234885%232004%23999399996%23490878%23FLA%23display%23Volume)&_cdi=4885&_sort=d&_docanchor=&_ct=24&_acct=C000058690&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=2744497&md5=941a13d88c4d955f4b2789a957c4a815 | accessdate = 2008-03-02 | doi = 10.1016/j.resuscitation.2003.12.013}} * {{1911|article=John Mayow|url=http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/John_Mayow}} {{DEFAULTSORT:Mayow, John}} [[Category:1643 births]] [[Category:1679 deaths]] [[Category:People in Cornish history]] [[Category:People from London]] [[Category:Alumni of Wadham College, Oxford]] [[Category:English chemists]] [[Category:English physiologists]] [[cs:John Mayow]] [[de:John Mayow]] [[ja:ジョン・メーヨー]]