A database for John Locke's medical notebooks and medical reading.

John Locke was born in 1632 and died in 1704, and devoted his working life to a remarkably wide range of interests, quite apart from the philosophical studies for which he is generally remembered. They included such topics as education, the national coinage, colonial administration and, not least, the life-long study of medicine. Indeed, Locke's interest in medicine was so strong that it was not until he was about tfirty years old that he finally decided against a medical career because of poor health.' All Locke's medical knowledge appears to have come from books and from his acquaintance. He entered Christ Church Oxford in 1652 and graduated MA in 1658 but never had any formal medical training and only occasional clinical experience.2 In other words, for all his intelligence and interest in the subject, Locke appears to have remained an educated amateur in medicine. His attempts in 1666 and 1670 to be awarded an Oxford medical degree were blocked by opposition within the university and it was not until 6 February 1675 that he was given a BM (though never a DM).3 Nevertheless, he made notes on patients from time to time;4 and, throughout his life, he continued to buy books on medical topics, as can be seen from Figure 1.