[1] He is most remembered for his pioneering work on blood transfusion and the function of the cardiopulmonary system, which he described in his book Tractatus de Corde.

Lower formed part of an informal research team, performing laboratory experiments at the University of Oxford during the Interregnum.

It was difficult to find people who would agree to be transfused, but an eccentric scholar, Arthur Coga, consented and the procedure was carried out by Lower and King before the Royal Society on 23 November 1667.

Transfusion gathered some popularity in France and Italy, but medical and theological debates arose, resulting in the practice being prohibited.

In Lower's time, it was thought that catarrh, an inflammation of the mucous membranes, might be caused by seepage of fluid from the brain to the nose.

Lower's book De Catarrhis is of historical significance because it was the first scholarly attempt by an English physician to take a classical doctrine (the theory that nasal secretions are an overspill from the brain) and disprove it by scientific experiment.

Lower wrote Diatribae T. Willisii de Febribus Vindicatio, an eight-volume defence of Dr. Willis and his doctrine of fevers.