MAYER 283 



neighbourhood, showing a great deal of gift for understand- 

 ing their mechanism. The question as to the possibiHty of 

 perpetual motion, which no doubt at that time was generally 

 discussed, early gave him much cause for thought when he 

 heard of it at home. At school he was not regarded as a 

 good scholar; but the old classics, and also Goethe's Faust 

 remained favourites all his Hfe. After leaving school, 

 Mayer studied medicine at Tubingen, and then completed 

 his training by visiting the hospitals in Munich, Vienna, 

 and Paris; he did not find in his student days satisfactory 

 lectures on physics at the university. 



He began his independent career as a doctor on a Dutch 

 East Indian ship with a crew of only twenty-eight, whose 

 health was so good that he had little to do. There were also 

 no passengers, so that Mayer was left practically alone with 

 his thoughts for the whole journey, lasting from February 

 1840 to February 1841, and interrupted only by a stop in 

 Java. But he had taken plenty of books with him, and, as he 

 himself writes, 'he enjoyed a harmless peace of mind, which 

 disposed him by preference to scientific occupation, and 

 allowed him to lead a pleasant life, though in narrow circum- 

 stances and far from any companions of like taste; no day 

 went by without interest of some kind.' In fact, everything 

 made a great impression on Mayer, everything that he ob- 

 served in the sky, on the water, or on the ship, as we see 

 from his diary; and physics also, among the sciences, in- 

 terested him from among his books, only he was not satisfied 

 by the way in which the 'red thread' was interrupted in a 

 thousand places, so that eflFects without causes, and causes 

 without effects were presented to the reader. In particular, 

 the inexplicability of the heat produced by friction attracted 

 his attention, and also the production of heat in the living 

 organism. 



In Java he was obliged on account of illness among the 

 crew, to let blood, and he was surprised and astonished to see 



