^26 Medicine. 



proved that the air lost something by coming in 

 contact with that organ ."^ And the former re- 

 marked that this something is absorbed by the 

 lungs; is probably that which maintains combus- 

 tion, which qualifies the air to support animal life, 

 and imparts to the blood the vermilion colour/ 

 Towards the latter part of the same century Dr. 

 Hook and Dr. Mayow published opinions con- 

 cerning respiration, which approach more nearly to 

 the doctrine now generally received than could 

 be readily believed if their writings themselves did 

 not bear witness. The former seems to have been 

 obscurely acquainted with oxygen and its absorp- 

 tion in breathing. The latter, according to the 

 opinion of Dr. Beddoes,^ " was acquainted with 

 ^' the composition of the atmosphere, and per- 

 *^ ceived the action of vital air in almost all the 

 ^^ wide extent of its mfluence. He carried on his 

 ^^ investigation of respiration from the diminution 

 *^ of the air by the breathing of animals, to the 

 ^' change it produces in the blood during its pas- 

 ^^ sage through the lungs. The office of the lungs, 

 *^ says Dr. Mayow, is to separate from the air, and 

 *' convey to the blood one of its constituent parts." 

 It is astonishing that such suggestions should 

 have been so little known and so little attended to 

 by succeeding physiologists. They seem to have 

 attracted but shght regard at the time of their pub- 

 lication, and very soon afterwards to have been 

 completely forgotten. But, after all, it must be 

 admitted that the superior light of modern discove- 

 ries, reflected on organs of eager discernment, is 

 alone sufficient to enable the reader of those anti- 

 quated writings to perceive, in the few truths they 

 contain, blended and buried under so much obscu- 



IV Tract. De usu Resplratlonls. 

 X Ibid. 



f See Dr. Bedooes's Analysis of Br, Mayow's Work,. 



