Background
Herbert Mayo was born on May 3, 1796, in London, City of London, United Kingdom to the family of John Mayo, and his wife, Ann, daughter of Thomas Cock. His father and eldest brother, Thomas, were prominent physicians in London.
anatomist educator neurologist physiologist scientist author
Herbert Mayo was born on May 3, 1796, in London, City of London, United Kingdom to the family of John Mayo, and his wife, Ann, daughter of Thomas Cock. His father and eldest brother, Thomas, were prominent physicians in London.
Herbert Mayo was a pupil of Charles Bell at the Windmill Street Anatomy School in 1812-1815 and graduated as a Doctor of Medicine from Leiden University in 1818. He was admitted a member of the Royal College of Surgeons by examination in 1819 and elected among the first fellows in 1843.
Herbert Mayo practiced surgery and taught anatomy in London from 1819 to 1843, becoming a senior surgeon to the Middlesex Hospital, where he founded the Medical School in 1836; he also wrote many successful textbooks. He was a professor of anatomy and surgery to Royal College of Surgeons 1828 and 1829, and his name appears in the first list of fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1843. On the establishment of King's College London in 1830, he received the appointment of professor of anatomy, and he became a professor of physiology and pathological anatomy in 1836. He resided at 19 George Street, Hanover Square.
Mayo supplemented the fifteen plates in his Commentaries by an atlas of six larger plates (each plate was printed in an outline and a shaded version) entitled A Series of Engravings Intended to Illustrate the Structure of the Brain and Spinal Chord (1827). He added that his observations would prove useful for pathologists in explaining “interruption or impairment of functions.”
Mayo’s final work on the subject or nerves was his monograph The Nervous System (1842). This was begun as a physiological introduction for a reissue of the 1827 Engravings, but in the event, the illustrations were not reprinted.
Mayo retired to Germany in 1843 for hydropathic treatment as a victim of “rheumatic gout,” and while there he wrote on The Cold Water Cure and on Mesmerism. He died in Germany at the age of fifty-six, survived by his wife, a son, and two daughters.
Mayo announced his independent discoveries of the physiology of the nerves in his Anatomical and Physiological Commentaries; the first part (August 1822) included a paper which described “Experiments to Determine the Influence of the Portio Dura of the Seventh and the Facial Branches of the Fifth Pair of Nerves” part two (July 1823) opened with a paper “On the Cerebral Nerves With Reference to Sensation and Voluntary Motion,” and it concluded with “Remarks Upon the Spinal Chord and the Nervous System Generally,” Mayo attributed sensibility to the fifth nerve and motor power to the seventh nerve, and he showed that a circumscribed segment of the nervous system sufficed to produce muscular action. He wrote that “An influence may be propagated from the sentient nerves of a part to their correspondent nerves of motion through the intervention of that part alone of the nervous system to which they are mutually attached” the term “reflex” was applied to this phenomenon by Marshall Hall in 1833. Neither Bell nor Mayo seems to have known at this time that François Magendie had achieved similar results in research which was reported in Paris (1821-1823). Bell protested his claim to priority against both Mayo and Magendie.
Although he made no further original discoveries, Mayo retained his interest in neurology. In his Outlines of Human Physiology, he gave “an extension of the original law respecting the place of origin of the nerves” He published a pamphlet on the Powers of the Roots of the Nerves in 1837 in reply to R. D. Grainger’s Observations on the Structure and Function of the Spinal Cord; Mayo described this as a restatement of his views after conversations with Grainger. In an appendix, he discussed recent demonstrations of hypnotism, “magnetic sleep.” by Baron Dupotet and concluded that “persons susceptible of it may be thrown into a kind of trance by the influence of imagination excited through the senses.” He also anticipated a possible value for anesthetizing a patient before “a surgical operation of little severity.” He did not discuss Bell’s claims, but recorded the highest regard for Magendie’s results and integrity.
Quotations:
“Nerves, it was discovered by the independent researches of Sir C. Bell, M. Magendie, and myself (each having contributed his separate share to the result) are of two kinds only, one sentient, the other voluntary.”
"Dr. Marshall Hall, who invented the term ’reflex action,’ has followed out the idea with great diligence, showing fresh instances parallel to my own, which I reduced to one theory in 1823."
"Survey of the nervous system and the reflections to which it gave rise did not elicit much that is new, yet display what has been discovered with new distinctness and force."
Quotes from others about the person
"Mayo was the first in enunciating the positive doctrine that the portio dura is the nerve of voluntary motion for the face, and the fifth nerve, the nerve of common sensation to the same. It is true there are certain passages in Sir Charles Bell's treatise in 1821 which make it difficult to conceive how he could have missed the truth, whilst there are other passages which show positively that he did miss it. Meanwhile, Mayo's statement and claim in 1822 were clear, precise, and unmistakable." - Robert Druitt, English medical writer
Herbert Mayo married Jessica Matilda, daughter of Samuel James Arnold, the dramatist. They had one son and two daughters.
