Mayow (John)

Opera Omnia Medico-Physica, Tractatibus quinque comprehensa…, second edition, title-page in red and black, engraved portrait & 7 plates (the sixth image split across two plates), light age yellowing, bookplate of Leonard Dobbin to front pastedown, contemporary vellum over boards, spine lettered in ink, soiled and darkened, rubbed, a few repairs to spine, [Garrison & Morton 578 (for the first edition)], 12mo, Arnold Leers, [The Hague], 1681.

*** The second edition of the collected works, though the first under the title ‘Opera Omnia’ (reprinting ‘Tractatus quinque’, Oxford 1674), of the physiologist and chemist John Mayow (c.1641-1679), who “must be classed with Hooke and Boyle, possessing the scientific imagination of the one, the tenacity of the other” (ODNB). His writings include a remarkably correct anatomical description of respiration and a recognition of the role of oxygen in the combustion of metals.