Ralph Bathurst spent most of his working life in Trinity College, Oxford. Strongly influenced by William Harvey, he was a friend and colleague of Thomas Willis, Robert Boyle and many other eminent experimentalists. His intended career as an Anglican priest and theologian was frustrated during the Commonwealth. Instead, he trained as a physician and practised in Abingdon in Berkshire and in the Navy. His examination papers for the degrees of Bachelor and Doctor of Medicine survived and were printed many years after his death. This paper, summarizing the three Latin lectures on respiration given for his doctoral degree in 1654, throws light on the physiological research carried out in Oxford at that time. The lectures included clinical observations, the results of experiments performed by himself and others, and speculations on the chemistry of air in the era before Joseph Priestley.
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