192 The English School [lect. 



bladder stretched out loosely, over the wide mouth of a bottle 

 for instance, the bladder bulges up into the cupping-glass. 

 " I have found," says he, " by experimenting with various 

 "animals that air (of a closed vessel in which the animal is 

 "allowed to remain until it dies for want of air) is by the 

 " breathing of animals reduced in volume by about j^th." 



By such experiments as these "it is manifest," says he, 

 " that air is deprived of its elastic force by the breathing of 

 " animals just in the same way that it is by the burning of a 

 " flame. We may infer that animals and fire deprive the air of 

 " particles of the same kind." 



Mayow as I have said, and indeed as we have seen, was 

 essentially a chemist, but he was also well versed in the new 

 physical learning of the time. It was only natural that he 

 should be fascinated with the elastic force which he believed to 

 be possessed to a peculiar degree by his igneo-aereal particles. 

 He attributed an exaggerated importance to this elastic force. 

 He enters into a long disquisition about it, and offers by means 

 of it an explanation of the explosive force of gunpowder. As 

 we have already hinted and as we shall later on clearly see the 

 chemical meaning of Mayow's discoveries was soon forgotten. 

 His chemical exposition was premature. But his physical 

 exposition fell on congenial soil. His igneo-aereal particles 

 continued to be spoken of after him, not with the chemical 

 properties which he attributed to them, but with the physical 

 properties only, simply as the elastic particles of air. 



Mayow however was not merely a chemist or a physicist, he 

 was above all things a physiologist. In his third tract, ' On 

 Respiration,' he gives in the first place an exposition of the 

 mechanics of breathing, an exposition clearer and better, more 

 exact and more true than that of Borelli, free from Borelli's 

 pedantic formalities, an exposition which might almost find its 

 place in a text-book of the present day. 



He explains that air enters the lungs during breathing 

 simply and solely because the pressure of the atmosphere or 

 the elastic force of the atmosphere drives air in to fill up the 

 increased space afforded by the enlarged and dilated thorax. 

 And he points out how the structure of the lung, as made 



