Pringle, John

John Pringle, Six Presidential Discourses before Royal Society, London, 1783. 

The primitive state of chemistry in Hales s university about the same time is shown in the lectures of Prof. John Hadley, F.R.S. (d. 5 November 1764). Hales s work on airs was carried out in the period 1710-27 his first paper, on the rise of sap, was read to the Royal Society in 1718. He often quotes the illustrious Sir Isaac Newton , Mr. Boyle, and Hauksbee, but mentions Mayow (whom he had read) only twice in passing, and Geoffroy in the French Memoirs . Hales s work, as Pringle said, was inspired by Newton s hint that Dense Bodies by Fermentation rarify into several sorts of Air, and this Air by Fermentation, and sometimes without it, returns into dense Bodies and his uncritical guess that the particles of air Shaken off from Bodies by Heat or Fermentation may occupy above a Million of Times more space than they... 

A Discourse on the Different Kinds of Air, 1773 in Six Discourses delivered by Sir John Pringle, Bart, taken President of the Royal Society on occasion of Six Annual Assignments of Sir Godfrey Copley s Medal, London, 1783,12. 

In 1775 Priestley wrote letters dated 15 March (to Sir John Pringle), I April (to Dr. Price), and 24 May (to Sir John Pringle, misdated 25 May in the printed paper), which were later printed in the Philosophical Transaction as An Account of further Discoveries in Air , dealing with dephlogisticated air, vitriolic acid air (sulphur dioxide), nitrous air, and vegetable acid air (acetic acid vapour). The first letter, on dephlogisticated air, was read to the Royal Society on 23 March. The letter was reprinted, with additions, in Priestley s book, from which the following account is taken. 

Priestley s first extensive paper on gases, Observations on Different Kinds of Air , was read in March 1772, but additions were made to it until November. On 30 November 1773 he was awarded a Copley Medal by the Royal Society for this work and that on electricity, and a discourse was delivered by the president, Sir John Pringle ... 

Sir John Pringle, Six Discourses delivered by Sir John Pringle, Bart, when President of the Royal Society on occasion of Six Annual Assignments of Sir Godfrey Copley s Medal. To which is prefixed the Life of the Author. By Andrew Kippis, D.D. F.R.S, and S.A. London, 1783 i f. A Discourse on the Different Kinds of Air, delivered Nov. 30, 1773 summary in Ohs. Phys., 1774, iii, 161 Fourcroy, (2), iii, 387 (ib., 389-414 on apparatus used from Hales to Lavoisier) Gmelin, (i), ii, 730-9. 

John Pringle (Stichell, Roxburgh, 10 April 1707-London, 14 (or 18) January 1782), pupil of Boerhaave, army physician, a Unitarian, F.R.S. 1745, President 1772, published memoirs on putrefaction, in which he examined the effects of a large number of substances on the process, and remarks on Hales s ventilators. Priestley, who found that the air of marshes is inferior to common air, thought he had thus confirmed Pringle s theory that intermittent and low fevers are due to moist miasmata. 

---