10 GRAHAM LUSK 



If a burning candle and an animal be put together in a bell jar 

 both will go out sooner than one alone because flame is extinguished and 

 an animal expires for want of nitro-aerial particles. 



"Air loses somewhat of its elastic force during its respiration by ani- 

 mals, as also in combustion. One must believe that animals, like fire, re- 

 move from air particles of the same nature." 



And in another place he writes, "Breathing brings the air into contact 

 with the blood to which it gives up its nitro-aerial constituent. Again 

 the motion (of the muscles) results from the chemical action in the 

 muscle with the combustible matter contained therein." 



Niter contains the nitro-aerial particles and hence gunpowder burns 

 without air. Many authors have written "as if it had been ordained 

 that niter should make as much noise in philosophy as in war, yet its 

 properties are still concealed from our knowledge." 



Calcined antimony mixed with niter, when acted on by heat from a 

 burning glass, increases in weight through addition of nitro-aerial par- 

 ticles. 



As to Mayow's death, at the age of thirty-nine it was written : 



"He paid his last debt to nature in an apothecary's house bearing 

 the sign of the Anchor in York Street near Covent-Garden, within the 

 liberty of Westminster (having been married a little before not alto- 

 gether to his content), in the month of September, 1679, and was buried 

 in the Church of St. Paul, Covent-Garden." 



Beddoes, his biographer, writes: "Mayow . . . silently and unper- 

 ceived in the obscurity of the last century discovered if not the whole 

 sum and substance, yet certainly many of those splendid truths which 

 adorn the writings of Priestley, Scheele, Lavoisier, Crawford, Goodwyn 

 and other philosophers of this day." 



"Should I ask you who of all your acquaintance is the person least 

 likely to be overtaken by surprise you would, I think, name a certain 

 Northern Professor. . . . Yet at the sight of the annexed representation 

 of Mayow's pneumatic apparatus, this sedate philosopher lifted up his 

 hands in compleat astonishment." ^ 



The "sedate philosopher" was undoubtedly Black. Writing in 1790, 

 however, Beddoes cannot escape from the absurd statement, "He (Mayow) 

 has clearly presented the notion of phlogiston which rendered the name 

 of Stahl so celebrated." 



Mayow's "Treatise on Respiration" was published in his twenty-eighth 

 year. Newton invented the calculus when twenty years old ; Black found 

 "fixed air" at twenty-four; R. Mayer formulated the Law of the Con- 

 servation of Energy at twenty-six. 



Mayer's paper containing the last-named doctrine was refused pub- 

 lication in Liebig's Annalen! These facts should afford a stimulus to 

 the young and food for the thought of the more mature. 



