Some early appraisals of the work of John Mayow.

Abstract

IN EARLIER pablications1 I showed that Mayow's work is mentioned by several authors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The present communication extends this list. Isbrand de Diemerbroeck2 says the theory of Alexander Mavrocordatus3 (M.D. Bologna, dragoman at the Ottoman Porte in Constantinople) that the use of respiration is to transmit blood from the right to the left side of the heart, was refuted by celebrated experiment of John Mayow, who injected blood or other fluid by a syringe into the pulmonary artery of a dead animal and found that it readily passed into the left ventricle of the heart (kanc opinionem etiam egregio experimento refutat Joh. Mayow).4 A year after Mayow's Tractatus Quinque was published, N. Lemery5 gave a condensed summary of the first eight pages of it, without mentioning Mayow. John Nicholas Pechlin, professor in Kiel, referred' to the participation of nitrous particles (particulx nitrose) in respiration, without naming Mayow. L. M. Barberius7 gave a summary of Mayow's theories. According to Angeli,8 Barberius was born about 1650 at Imola. He studied at Bologna. His book was mentioned by Manget' and Mazzuchelli.'0 A short analysis of it appeared in 1782, and it is named with an incorrect date 1681 by Gmelin'2 and Hoefer;1' it is dated correctly by Scherer4 and by B. Boni.5