One of the best English medical classics

MAYOW, John.

Tractatus quinque medico-physici.

Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre, 1674.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Good. Item #001700

Tractatus quinque medico-physici. Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre, 1674. 8vo (189x111 mm), [40] 1-335 [1], 3-152 pp., engraved portrait and 6 folding plates, contemporary calf, rebacked, somewhat spotted, slight fraying to edge of portait, new endpapers, p. 189 torn with partial loss of two words. Provenance: Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, inkstamps on title. ----

NLM/Krivatsy 7653; Waller 6392; Wellcome IV, p. 93; Wing M-1537; Norman 1474. - FIRST EDITION, including revisions of two treatises (De respiratione and De rachitide) first published in 1668, and three new works, including his most celebrated work, De sal-nitro et spiritu nitro-aereo, on combustion, respiration, the composition of the atmosphere, and aerial - nitrate. He proved what both he and Hooke contended, that only a portion of air is used in respiration and combustion, by demonstrating that air in an enclosed space, when burned or breathed, is reduced only by one fourteenth. He also discovered that the muscles were the source of animal heat, and the double-articulation of the ribs with the spine. '[Mayow's] Tractatus, embodying all his brilliant conclusions, is one of the best English medical classics' (Garrison-Morton 578).

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