Gun Powder, Lightning, Thunder, and Nitro-Aerial Spirit

GUN POWDER, LIGHTNING, THUNDER, AND NITRO-AERIAL SPIRIT 

In 1668 Mayow published two tracts dealing with respiration and rickets. These were revised in 1674 and published with three additional tracts to constitute the Tractatus Quinque MedicO Physici... P It is in this work that Mayow 

FIGURE 150. This plate is from John Mayow s Tractus Quinque Medico Physici Ox-ford, 1674). It shows his experiments in which nitrO aerial spirit in saltpetre was trans ferred to antimony under a heating glass. In effect oxygen was transferred between the two substances (from the Dr. Roy G. Neville Historical Chemical Library, a collection in the Othmer Library, CHF). 

Partington remarks on Mayow s claim to have heated niter and collected the resulting nitric acid. He notes if he had actually tried the experiment he could have discovered oxygen. However, as Partington and others remarked. 

FIGURE 151, A water spout depicted in John Mayow s Tractus Quinque Medico Physici (1681 edition, published in The Hague the first edition was published in Oxford in 1674). 

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