Dr. Butler revisited: appreciation and comments.

aegrum: "Have burdened the sick man." 442, line 6. The right reading is "Impotencye." 442, line 14. The quotation reads: Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum. Grata superveniet quae non sperabitur hora. Believe that every day which has shone on you has been your last. Each hour will then come as a pleasure through being unexpected. The source is Horace Epistles 1.4.14, and is appropriate advice for a condemned man. These notes confirm that Butler was a typical Elizabethan academic, imbued with the classics and the Bible, but also ready to accept some modem authors and to use practical commonsense in treating his patients. In his theory he was a pragmatic Galenist of the old school, with J. C. Scaliger his favourite among the moderns, and, pace Dr. Boss, in these papers he shows no acquaintance with or liking for Paracelsus and his medicine. He follows Galen's example in treating the individual as a whole, taking into account mental as well as physical factors. 24 If some of his treatments appeared strange and wonderful to his contemporaries, that too could be said of Galen, and his endeavours to combine in fitting measure both experience and reason follow Galenic precept. Yet throughout he preserves a trenchant independence ofjudgment, and his vigorous and exuberant style, in controversy and in prescription, proves him beyond doubt a Cambridge character. THE LATE Mr. M. Newbold of Cambridge transcribed some of the Clare College papers of William Butler (1535-1618), but the transcriptions were never published. I therefore made transcriptions of eight papers selected for medical interest.' In my copying of the four of these which had transcriptions by Mr. Newbold I was fortunate to be able to use these latter papers as a source of suggestions which, of course, I was not obliged to take. Dr. Nutton's paper now extends this work by