11 Facts About Ralph Bathurst

Ralph Bathurst, FRS was an English theologian and physician.

Ralph Bathurst was born in Hothorpe, Northamptonshire in 1620 and educated at King Henry VIII School, Coventry.

Ralph Bathurst originally intended a career in the Church of England, and was ordained in 1644, but his prospects were disrupted by the English Civil War, and he turned to medicine.

Ralph Bathurst collaborated with Thomas Willis, and it was to Bathurst that Willis dedicated his first medical publication, the Diatribae Duae of 1659.

Ralph Bathurst was active in the intellectual ferment of the time, and very well-connected.

Ralph Bathurst belonged to the overlapping circle of physicians following the tradition of William Harvey, and which included again Willis, George Ent, Walter Charleton, Nathaniel Highmore, and Charles Scarburgh; these were royalists who had attended Charles I of England.

Ralph Bathurst worked in practical medicine under the physician Daniel Whistler.

Ralph Bathurst was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1663, and was made President of Trinity College in 1664, where he initiated building work to designs by Christopher Wren, a personal friend.

Ralph Bathurst swayed Samuel Parker from Presbyterian views to an Anglican outlook.

Ralph Bathurst was one of thirteen sons of George Bathurst of Theddingworth, Leicestershire and his first wife Elizabeth Villiers of Hothorpe Hall, Northamptonshire.

Theodore Ralph Bathurst, known as a neo-Latin poet, was a nephew.