Nathan Paget

Nathan Paget (1615–1679) was an English physician.

Life

He was the son of Thomas Paget, rector of Stockport, Cheshire, and nephew of John Paget, and was born at Manchester in 1615. He graduated M.A. at Edinburgh, and on 25 November 1638 entered as a student of medicine at the University of Leyden, where he graduated M.D. 3 August 1639.

He began practice in England, outside London, and was admitted an extra licentiate of the College of Physicians of London 4 April 1640. He was incorporated M.D. at Cambridge 3 June 1642,[1] and was elected a fellow of the College of Physicians 4 November 1646. He was nominated physician to the Tower of London by the council of state of the Commonwealth on 31 December 1649. He was one of the seven physicians who aided Francis Glisson in the observations preparatory to the publication of the Tractatus de Rachitide (on rickets) in 1650. He was a censor of the College of Physicians in 1655, 1657, 1659, 1669, and 1678, and he delivered the Harveian oration in 1664.

He lived in Coleman Street, and was a parishioner of John Goodwin, whose works he owned.[2] Paget was a friend of John Milton, whose third wife Elizabeth Minshull was his cousin - they met through Paget.[3] Around the same period he also found Thomas Ellwood as reader for the blind Milton, in 1662.[4] The earliest biography of Milton is anonymous: Paget has been suggested as the author.[5]

Paget's library was celebrated, and contained over 2,000 titles. According to Christopher Hill

“ Nathan Paget must have been a man congenial to Milton in many ways. His literary taste seems to have been Spenserian; he was at least strongly interested in anti-Trinitarianism and mortalism; he may have been one of the Socinian Baptists to whom Sewel refers in 1674. His very special interest in Boehme, whom he appears to have read in the original German (he had several German dictionaries) makes it likely that he would have discussed him with the poet.[6] ”

Notes

  1. ↑ "Paget, Nathan (PGT641N)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  2. ↑ John Coffey. John Goodwin and the Puritan Revolution (2008), p. 281.
  3. ↑ William Bridges Hunter, John T. Shawcross, Milton's English Poetry (1986), p. 26.
  4. ↑ William Bridges Hunter et al., A Milton Encyclopedia vol. 7 (1980), p. 97.
  5. ↑ http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/John_Milton
  6. ↑ Christopher Hill, Milton and the English Revolution (1979), Appendix 3, Nathan Paget and his Library, p. 495.

References

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