Dr Jonathan Goddard, F. R. S

Dr Jonathan Goddard, whom Rolleston calls a physician of many parts and varied experience, was born in the year 1617, the son of Henry, a wealthy Deptford shipbuilder who lived in Greenwich. He was sent to school at Clapham and at the age of 15 was entered at Magdalen Hall (later Hertford College), Oxford, as a Commoner. There, for four years, ‘he applied himself to physic’, but left without a degree in 1636. It is thought that he may then, following the custom of the times, have continued his medical studies on the Continent, as Wood, who was one of his students later when he became Warden of Merton College, Oxford, says that on leaving Magdalen ‘he went as I presume beyond the Seas’, although no record of his name is to be found at Padua or Leyden. Not having graduated in Arts he was unable on his return to proceed in physick at Oxford, so he went to Cambridge and took the degree of Bachelor in that faculty as a Pensioner of Christ’s College on 26 June 1637. In the following year he became M.B., and in 1643 he took his Doctorate in Medicine

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