James Keill

Background

James Keill was born on March 27, 1673, in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was the son of Sarah Cockburn and Robert Keill, an Edinburgh lawyer, and nephew of William Cockburn. He was also the younger brother of John Keill, the distinguished Newtonian mathematician.

Education

Keill and his brother entered the University of Edinburgh, although for James it can be specified only that he registered in 1688 for the philosophy course of Andrew Massey. He later went to Paris, where he attended the chemistry lectures of Nicolas Lemery and perhaps the anatomical demonstrations of Joseph Duverney; finally, he matriculated at the University of Leiden on October 16, 1696, but did not receive a degree.

In May 1699 Keill obtained a Doctor of Medicine degree from Aberdeen.

Career

Upon his return to England, Keill found a ready use for his Continental education as an unofficial anatomy lecturer at Oxford and Cambridge, whose students were wholly dependent on private teachers for any instruction in the basic medical sciences.

In 1703 Keill’s medical practice began to prosper in Northampton. He combined research with a successful career as a country physician, in which capacity he numbered several members of the nobility among his patients. That he was a conscientious if not a very innovative practitioner can be drawn from an extensive medical correspondence with Sir Hans Sloane.

Achievements

• Though in his own century Keill's reputation declined as vitalistic trends overshadowed the quantitative approach in English physiology, his anatomical texts still provided sound basic knowledge to generations of students, and his physiology may at least be considered a rational attempt at quantification. Some of his works became very popular; they appeared in England and the Continent in many editions from many publishers, in Latin, English, and Dutch.
  
  He received an honorary Doctor of Medicine degree from Cambridge on April 16, 1705.

Works

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  • An account of animal secretion, the quantity of blood in the humane body, and muscular motion 1708
  • The Anatomy Of The Human Body Abridged 1698
  • Essays on Several Parts of the Animal Oeconomy 1717
  • Tentamina medico-physica 1718

Views

The first edition of Keill’s popular Anatomy of the Humane Body Abridged (1698) was largely copied from the contemporary French compendium of Amé Bourdon. Subsequent, more original editions successively reflected not only Keill’s increasing anatomical knowledge but also his own physiological research, in which he showed a definite iatromechanical bias as early as the second edition (1703) - presenting, for example, the rudiments of his theory of glandular secretion.

The fourth edition of his Anatomy (1710) represented an extensive and final revision with summaries of the physiological theories first described extensively in An Account of Animal Secretion, the Quantity of Blood in the Humane Body, and Muscular Motion (1708). In this work, Keill examined the problems suggested in the title by using measurement and mathematics in general, and more particularly by positing an attractive force between particles of matter. This concept, admittedly derived from the Newtonian-inspired theories of attraction developed by his brother, led Keill to propose, among other things, that glandular secretions consisted of cohesions of particles in the blood; and that these particles had united through forces of attraction and were mechanically filtered by various glands according to size. Muscle contraction involved the presence in muscle fibers of blood globules, which had compressed air molecules that could expand when the blood globules were pulled apart by the attraction of animal spirits.

In contrast to Stephen Hales, Keill was not an ingenious experimentalist. Often he simply took a few anatomical measurements and then retreated into mathematical abstractions - which in one case led to extravagant results regarding the rate of blood flow. Yet even here Keill may be credited with discerning a new problem since he claimed the first calculations of the absolute velocity at which blood travels through the aorta and smaller vessels; he also recognized that the blood’s velocity must decrease as the number of arterial branches increases. Keill would also appear to have been one of the first to study the ratio of the fluid to the solid portions of the body, partly through experiments involving tissue desiccation. Finally, he deserves praise for stressing the value of physiological studies in response to his more empirically minded contemporaries. The second edition of Keill’s physiological treatise, Essays on Several Parts of the Animal Oeconomy (1717), contained a study of the force of the heart which provoked a debate with the physician James Jurin, who believed that Keill had not sufficiently understood the Newtonian principles he had used to obtain his result.

Membership

In 1712 Keill was elected to the Royal Society.

• 

  Member

  Royal Society , England

  1712

Personality

Physical Characteristics: Aside from an attack of bladder stones, Keill generally enjoyed good health until 1716, when he developed a tumor in his mouth.

Connections

Keill never married.

Father:

Robert Keill

Mother:

Sarah Cockburn

Uncle:

William Cockburn

Brother:

John Keill

teacher:

Andrew Massey

teacher:

Nicolas Lemery

teacher:

Joseph Duverney

Friend:

Hans Sloane

References

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Volume 7
  1973