CH. XVI. JOHN MAYOW. 131 



bees, and even worms, became insensible ; while fish, 

 though they lived longer than the mice, soon turned on their 

 backs and ceased to live. He also put a bird under a glass 

 vessel full of air, and it died after three-quarters of an hour. 

 It was clear, therefore, that fresh air is necessary to life, and 

 Boyle began to think that just as a candle-flame cannot be 

 kept up without air, so there must be some vital fire in the 

 heart which is extinguished when air is shut out from it. 



This opinion he discussed at the Oxford meetings, and a 

 young physician named John Mayow listened very eagerly, 

 and then went home and set himself to try and find out what 

 this strange power in the air could be, without which neither 

 fire nor animals could exist. 



Mayow's Experiments on Respiration and Combustion, 

 1645-1679. — John Mayow's private history is very short. 

 He was bom in Cornwall in 1645 y ^^ became a Fellow of 

 All Souls', Oxford, and practised as a physician in Bath ; and 

 finally he died at the house of an apothecary in York Street, 

 Covent Garden, in 1679, before he was thirty- four years of 

 age. This is all we know about his life ; but he must have 

 been a diligent worker and a real lover of science, for though 

 he died so young he left behind him an account of a number 

 of experiments and discoveries which entitle him to be called 

 the greatest chemist of the seventeenth century. I wish we 

 could go through all his experiments, for they form a most 

 beautiful lesson of the earnest and painstaking way in which 

 God's laws should be investigated. Mayow never made a 

 careless experiment ; he never thrust in his own guesses 

 when it was possible to work out the truth ; he went on 

 patiently step by step, taking every care to avoid mistakes, 

 and never resting till he had got to the bottom of his 

 difficulties. Let us now take some of his experiments on 



