Abstract
A PAPER on “Sir John Floyer and his Times” was read recently before the Johnson Society by Mrs. Lilian Lindsay, honorary librarian of the British Dental Association. Sir John Floyer was born in 1649 at Lichfield, the birthplace of Samuel Johnson, and was educated at Queen's College, Oxford, where he took his M.B. in 1674 and his M.D. in 1686. The course consisted in readings in the medical classics and memorizing the aphorisms of Hippocrates and the works of Galen. Theses were written and were upheld in disputation. There was no clinical teaching or opportunity for practical experience. The more serious students went abroad for this, especially to Padua. In 1686 Floyer was knighted. In 1687 appeared his first book entitled “The Touchstone of Medicines Discovering the Vertues of Vegetables, Minerals and Animals by their Tastes and Smells”, which was published by Dr. Johnson's father, in the preface to which he mentions that he had visited the Garden which the Society of Apothecaries had brought in 1671 and was first called the Physic Garden in 1678. In 1697 he published an inquiry into “The Right Uses and Abuses of Hot, Cold and Temperate Baths in England”, which contained a history of bathing from the earliest times and showed that Floyer had visited all the available springs, wells and watering places in Great Britain.
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Sir John Floyer (1649–1734). Nature 151, 694 (1943). https://doi.org/10.1038/151694b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/151694b0