Richard Lower

Richard Lower was an English physician and experimental physiologist born in Cornwall around 1631. Educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, he became associated with the scientific circle around Thomas Willis and other early experimental investigators. Lower collaborated in anatomical and neurological research before concentrating increasingly on the heart, lungs and circulation, using animal experiments to investigate problems that could not be resolved through traditional medical theory alone.

In Tractatus de Corde, published in 1669, Lower described important observations on cardiac function and on the change in the colour of blood as it passed through the lungs. He also became a pioneer of transfusion research, demonstrating transfusion between dogs and participating with Edmund King in the 1667 transfusion of sheep’s blood into Arthur Coga before the Royal Society. Lower later established a successful London medical practice and died in 1691.

In Iain Pears’ An Instance of the Fingerpost, Pears places the murder mystery among real Restoration scholars and scientists, including John Locke, Robert Boyle and Richard Lower, while showing how experimental knowledge, political surveillance and religious belief could all be used to establish authority.