William Butler (physician)

William Butler (1535–1617) was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, who gained a near-legendary reputation during his lifetime as an eccentric, a drunkard, and “the greatest physitian of his time”.^[1]

Butler was born at Ipswich in Suffolk and matriculated as a sizar at Peterhouse College, Cambridge, in 1558 (BA 1561, MA 1564, Fellow 1561). In 1572 he was elected a Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge (later Clare College), and granted a licence to practise physic by the University.^[2] According to the 17th-century antiquary John Aubrey, he lived at an apothecary’s shop at Cambridge with a servant, an “old mayd” named Nell whose job it was to fetch him home each night from a tavern.^[3]

He first came to notice, Aubrey writes, in 1603 when he revived a local clergyman from an opium-induced coma by the unorthodox method of slaughtering a cow and placing the senseless parson inside the “cowes warme belly”.^[4] Although he had no medical degree, Butler was appointed a court physician by King James VI and I and attended the King’s eldest son Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, during his fatal illness of November 1612. Butler is believed to have been neither a Galenist nor a Paracelsian but rather an “empiric” physician who based his treatments not on any theory but purely on reasoning and experience. He opposed the common practice of blood-letting (phlebotomy or venesection) and the then novel use of dangerous chemical remedies.

Some of Butler’s papers are preserved at Clare College and show that he sometimes gave medical advice by letter. One begins with a reference to King Henry VIII: “Moste honest and righte honorable Thomas, in the time of Graunde Harrye that vaste and Rumbleduste Gyaunte, that had better skill of a Butcher’s axe, then of a secretaries penne, (though he once confuted Luther) it fortuned that a Laureate poëte of his Courte fell Sike and departed his life.” Another begins with a reference to a patient’s drinking habits: “My lord, potton & Reelingworthe towne are not farre a sondere. The nearest way ys by tipplestall Grannge, whyche will brynge yowe to staggerington, and so to downfall in the vale.”^[5] Butler is credited with inventing a medicinal drink, Dr Butler’s purging ale, that was popular in 17th-century England.^[6] Shortly before his death he beqeathed ₤260 to Clare College for the purchase of "finest gold" from which a communion cup and a paten were made.^[2]

According to a contemporary inscription on an engraved portrait titled “Guilielmus Butler Cantabrig. Huius Aetatis Princeps Medicorum. Anno 1620”, Butler died in December 1617 at the age of 83. The epitaph below it reads:

1. ^ Naulum Charontis (“Charon’s fare”): the coins which the Romans placed inside the mouths of the dead before burial.
2. ^ http://www.grosvenorprints.com/stock.php?keyword=William+Butler&WADbSearch1=go. Retrieved 8 November 2013.

Butler is buried in the chancel of the Church of St Mary the Great, Cambridge, where he has a monument and a Latin funerary plaque.^[7] He also has a pub sign in the City of London, The Old Dr Butler’s Head.^[8][9]

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