Part 4

Nathaniel Highmore, The History of Generation, Examining the several Opinions of divers Authors, expecially that of Sir Kenelm Digby, in his Discourse of Bodies, London, 1651, p. 4.

Ibid., pp. 26-27.

Ibid., pp. 27-28.

Ibid., p. 45.

Ibid., Pp. 90-91.

William Harvey, Opera omnia: a Collegio Medicorum Londinensi edita, Londini, 1766, p. 136.

William Harvey, Anatomical Excercises on the Generation of Animals, trans. Robert Willis, London, 1847, p. 462.

Ibid., pp. 336-339.

Works of William Harvey, trans. Robert Willis, London, 1847, pp. lxx-lxxi.

Harvey, op. cit., pp. 462-463.

Ibid., p. 457.

F. J. Cole, Early Theories of Sexual Generation, Oxford, 1930, p. 140.

Thomas Browne, The Works, ed. Geoffrey Keynes, Chicago, 1964, I, 261-262.

Ibid., II, 265.

Ibid., III, 442.

Ibid., III, 442-452.

Ibid., I, 50.

Ibid., I, 14.

Walter Needham, Disquisitio anatomica de formato foetu, London, 1667.

John Mayow, "De Respiratione foetus in utero et ovo," in Tractatus Quinque Medico-Physici, Oxonii, 1674, p. 311.

Ibid., pp. 319-320.

Robert Boyle, The Works, London, 1772, I, 548-549.

Browne, op. cit., II, 261.

Robert Boyle as an Amateur Physician

LESTER S. KING

Robert Boyle was not a physician. To be sure, he had engaged in some casual anatomical studies, but he had not formally studied medicine and did not have a medical degree. Nevertheless, he engaged in what we would call medical practice as well as medical research and exerted a strong influence on the course of medicine during the latter seventeenth century, an influence prolonged well into the eighteenth. He lived during the period of exciting yet painful transition when medical theory and practice were undergoing a complete transformation towards what we may call the "early modern" form. The transition, naturally gradual, extended over three centuries, but I wish to examine only a very small fragment of this period, namely, the third quarter of the seventeenth century.

Boyle's first major work which dealt extensively with medical problems was the Usefulness of Experimental Philosophy. This work, although published in 1663, had been written in two parts, the first much earlier than the second. Fulton indicates it had been drafted around 1650, while Hall ascribes it to the period 1647-1648. This first part has relatively little to do with medicine; the references are few and rather incidental, and have significance only for the light they throw on "natural philosophy" and "natural religion." The second part, however, written apparently not too long before publication, has a great deal to do with medicine and constitutes one of the important medical documents of the century.

Deserving of mention is an earlier and minor work of Boyle, indeed, his first published writing, only recently identified. This work, apparently written in 1649, bore the title "An Invitation to a free and generous communication of Secrets and Receits in Physick," and appeared anonymously in 1655 as part of a volume entitled Chymical, Medicinal and Chirurgical Addresses Made to Samuel Hartlib, Esquire. For our purposes, it is significant as emphasizing his early interest in medicine.