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From medicine to natural philosophy: Francis Hauksbee's way to the air-pump

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2008

TERJE BRUNDTLAND
TERJE BRUNDTLAND
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Tromsø, N-9037 Tromsø, Norway. Email: terje.brundtland@phys.uit.no.
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Abstract

Francis Hauksbee (1660–1713) is well known for his double-barrelled air-pump. However, the origin of this pump, and Hauksbee's background, are often described as a mystery. This text seeks to dispel the riddle. It is argued that Hauksbee's competence as an exceptional maker of air-pumps was developed between 1699 and 1703 as a result of his experiences with the construction, manufacturing and sale of cupping-glasses. His cupping utensils embodied a new design, where syringes were used to evacuate the glasses, instead of the traditional way by fire or mouth suction. These syringes, which in fact were small air-pumps, were perfected between 1699 and 1701. A larger syringe, introduced in 1701, served as a transition from the cupping-syringe to his first air-pump for use in natural philosophy. This syringe was described as a ‘combined engine’, which could serve as an air-pump, a condensing engine and a syringe for injecting air, wax or mercury into pathological specimens. Hauksbee's first air-pump was a single-barrelled model introduced in 1702, based on the combined engine. Its various features, such as easy and convenient leak-tightening, exact pressure measurements by an in-built barometer and an air-inlet function for readmission of air into the receiver, are discussed. Finally, it is shown that these activities gave Hauksbee the reputation of being an outstanding instrument-maker, years before the double-barrelled air-pump was in sight.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , June 2008 , pp. 209 - 240
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 British Society for the History of Science

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References

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2 This article is based on the first two chapters of my D.Phil. thesis: T. Brundtland, ‘Pneumatics established: Francis Hauksbee and the air-pump’, University of Oxford, 2006, B.L. DN24024.

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46 A scarificator was a specially designed instrument that could make up to sixteen small incisions in one operation by means of spring-loaded knives. The earliest evidence I have found of the use of such instruments in cupping is from Hauksbee (1701; op. cit. (45)). Previously the introduction of scarificators in cupping has been attributed to Laurence Heister (1683–1758) (Brockbank, op. cit. (29), 80), and the scarificator has been described as an early nineteenth-century device (R. Porter (ed.), The Cambridge Illustrated History of Medicine, Cambridge, 1996, 124). An early scarificator is described by Ambroise Paré (1510–1590); however, this is only used for curing gangrene. A Paré, An Explanation of the Fashion and Use of Three and Fifty Instruments of Chirurgery, Edinburgh, 1634, 107.

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51 Hauksbee gave no prices. It is with the instrument-maker Benjamin Martin in the 1750s that one first learns of the cost of apparatus such as that Hauksbee made. In 1757 Martin sold cupping-syringes with glasses for one guinea. According to several investigations, however, prices and wages were in general relatively stable during the first three quarters of the eighteenth century. See J. Burnett, History of the Cost of Living, Aldershot, 1993 (first published 1969), 131; J. Millburn, Retailer of the Sciences, London, 1986, 29; see also http://www.pierre-marteau.com/currency/indices/uk-02.html.

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58 Post Man, 10 October 1706.

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62 Calculations based on volumes of cupping-glasses, cupping-syringes, air-pump receivers and air-pump barrels of ten, fifty, 11,000 and 270 cubic centimetres respectively, and an end-pressure of 50 millibars.

63 F. J. Cole, ‘The history of anatomical injections’, in Studies in the History and Method of Science (ed. C. Singer), 2 vols., Oxford, 1921, i, 323.

64 Such a syringe, convertible from a simple air-pump to a condensing engine by turning the piston upside down, is described in J. Desaguliers, A Course of Experimental Philosophy, London, 1744, 390, Plate 21, Figure 11, and Plate 24, Figures 5 and 6.

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67 Based on instruments held in the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford.

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78 29.5 inches (760 mm) of mercury corresponds to normal atmospheric pressure.

79 Boyle, op. cit. (11), i, 157 (the first air-pumps) and vi, 36 (the second pump).

80 Harris, op. cit. (71).

81 In Boyle's second pump a deviation from the correct sequence would result in the receiver being filled with water.

82 Royal Society Journal Book, JBC 10, 1702–14, 22 December 1703.

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87 Boyle's last series of air-pump experiments (using Papin's double-barrelled pump) are described in R. Boyle, A Continuation of New Experiments (…) The Second Part, London, 1682. See Boyle, op. cit. (11), ix, 123–263.

88 Post Man, 1 May 1705.

89 Harris, op. cit. (71).

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91 Daily Courant, 9 December 1704.

92 Post Man, 31 January 1699.

93 Flying Post, 9 May 1699.

94 In the period between 1690 and 1700 about twenty per cent of the elected Fellows belonged to this group. M. Hunter, The Royal Society and Its Fellows, 1660–1700, Oxford, 1994.

95 W. Cowper, The Anatomy of the Human Body, Oxford, 1698.

96 Harris, ‘Barometers’, in idem, Lexicon Technicum, 1st edn, London, 1704. See Figure 2. Hauksbee was a subscriber to Lexicon Technicum.

97 Royal Society Journal Book, op. cit. (82), 22 December 1703.

98 Other popular topics were mechanics, optics, hydrostatics and astronomy.

99 J. Desaguliers, Physico-mechanical Lectures, London, 1717, 39.

100 W. Vream, A Description of the Air-Pump, London, 1717, Experiment 18.

101 Boyle, op. cit. (11), vii, 463.

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103 Vream, op. cit. (100), Experiment 17.

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107 Hauksbee, F., ‘Several experiments on the attrition of bodies in vacuo’, Philosophical Transactions (1704), 24, 2165–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Boyle's book, A Continuation of New Experiments (…) The Second Part, describing his third air-pump (made by Papin), was reviewed in the rather obscure Weekly Memorials for the Ingenious, London, 11 December 1682, 335–9.

108 For a description of air-pumps and air-pump experiments in the Royal Society at this period see Houghton, J., A Collection for the Improvements of Husbandry and Trade 1, No. 17, 4 June 1692Google Scholar.