marriage only), Augustus Frederick Mayo, B.A., barrister-at-law, Rev. Robert Mayo, B.A., Charles Thomas Mayo of Corsham, Wiltshire, and four other children.
He published: 1. ‘Essay on the Influence of Temperament in Modifying Dyspepsia,’ 1831. 2. ‘Essay on relation of the Theory of Morals to Insanity,’ 1831. 3. ‘Elements of the Pathology of the Human Mind,’ 1838. 4. ‘Harveian Oration,’ 1841. 5. ‘Clinical Facts and Reflections,’ 1847. 6. ‘Outlines of Medical Proof,’ 1848 and 1850, with ‘Sequel,’ 1849. 7. ‘Medical Testimony in Cases of Lunacy’ (Croonian lectures), 1854, with supplement, 1856. 8. ‘Medical Examinations and Physicians' Requirements considered,’ 1857.
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. iii. 200; Hist. of Mayo Family, 1882.]
MAYOW, MAYOUWE, or MAYO, JOHN (1640–1679), physiologist and chemist, ‘descended from a genteel family of his name living at Bree in Cornwall’ (Wood), was son of William and Elizabeth Mayow. Born on 24 May 1640 (Sloane, 1708, f. 117) in the parish of St. Dunstan-in-the-West, London, he was received as commoner of Wadham College, Oxford, 3 April 1658, and admitted scholar 23 Sept. 1659. On the recommendation of Henry Coventry (1619–1686) [q. v.], who was a former fellow of the college, he was elected on 3 Nov. 1660 (Gardiner, Registers of Wadham) to a fellowship at All Souls' College. He graduated B.C.L. 30 May 1665, and D.C.L. 5 July 1670. Mayow obtained the further privilege of studying physic, which exempted him from taking holy orders. It is probable that he was a pupil of Thomas Willis [q. v.], Sedleian professor of natural philosophy, whom he treated in controversy with especial respect, and he certainly came into contact with Richard Lower [q. v.], who was working with Willis.
Mayow practised medicine at Bath in the summer season, and made a careful chemical study of the Bath waters, and published the results as a chapter of his tract ‘De Sal-Nitro’ (cf. his Tractatus Quinque). One of his rivals, Dr. Thomas Guidott [q. v.] , denounced his chief conclusions in his ‘Discourse of Bathe,’ 1676, and suggested at the same time that Mayow had ‘ploughed with his heifer’ (Discourse, p. 12). Mayow was elected F.R.S. 30 Nov. 1678, on the proposition of Hooke, a fact of some importance in connection with the bitter charge of plagiarism made against him by Thomson (Hist. of the Royal Society, p. 467). That there is much in common between the fundamental ideas of Hooke (Micrographia, 1665, p. 103) and of Mayow with regard to combustion is undeniable, although the two men approached the subject in very different ways; but it must be noted that Hooke brought no charge in this connection against Mayow, and maintained friendly relations with him. ‘He died,’ says Wood, ‘in an apothecaries house bearing the sign of the Anker, in York Street, Covent Garden (having a little before been married, not altogether to his content).’ He was buried in the church of St. Paul, Covent Garden, 10 Oct. 1679. Prefixed to the ‘Tractatus quinque’ is a fine engraved portrait of Mayow. The face is long and thin, the features, and especially the mouth, delicately moulded and expressive.
In 1668 Mayow published his ‘Tractatus duo, de Respiratione et de Rachitide,’ Oxford, 8vo. The second tract, purely medical, was not of great importance; the subject of the first determined the work of Mayow's life. They were republished at Leyden in 1671, and an English translation of ‘De Rachitide,’ by W. Tury, appeared under the title Rhachitidologia at Oxford, in 1685. The two tracts were meanwhile republished at Oxford in 1674 (with the vice-chancellor's imprimatur, 17 July 1673), together with three fresh essays under the title, ‘Tractatus quinque Medico-Physici,’ 8vo. The book was dedicated, with a grateful and characteristic preface, to his patron, Coventry, and abstracts were published in the ‘Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.’ The ‘Tractatus quinque’ were republished at the Hague in 1681, 8vo, under the title ‘Opera Omnia,’ and at Geneva in 1685. They were translated into Dutch (1684), German (1799), and French (1840).
From the ‘numerosa scriptorum turba’ of his time Mayow at the outset chooses Descartes as his master in method. He takes his facts from great observers like Boyle, Malpighi, Steno, Willis, and Lower, but above all from personal observation. In the tract on ‘Respiration’ (1668) he described its mechanism, with the movement of ribs and diaphragm, almost as perfectly as can be done to-day (Heidenhein). He made the capital discovery of the double articulation of the ribs with the spine, and put forward views with regard to the function of the internal intercostals which are still under discussion. The function of breathing is merely, he says, to bring air in contact with the blood, to which it gives up its nitroaerian constituent (oxygen), and from which it carries off the vapours produced by the heating of the blood. He shows that the heart cannot be dilated by the blood fermenting in its cavity (Descartes), but that it is a muscle, whose function is to drive the blood through the lungs and over the body, a view proved experi-
