II
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,[37] 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[38] indicates it had been drafted around 1650, while Hall[39] 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.