I have often tried to find out more about him, and some day I hope I
shall. But up to the present, all that the books have told me of
this obscure sage is that his name was William Butler, and that he
was an eminent physician, sometimes called "the Aesculapius of his
age." He was born at Ipswich, in 1535, and educated at Clare Hall,
Cambridge; in the neighbourhood of which town he appears to have
spent the most of his life, in high repute as a practitioner of
physic. He had the honour of doctoring King James the First after
an accident on the hunting field, and must have proved himself a
pleasant old fellow, for the king looked him up at Cambridge the
next year, and spent an hour in his lodgings. This wise physician
also invented a medicinal beverage called "Doctor Butler's Ale." I
do not quite like the sound of it, but perhaps it was better than
its name. This much is sure, at all events: either it was really a
harmless drink, or else the doctor must have confined its use
entirely to his patients; for he lived to the ripe age of eighty-
three years.
Between the time when William Butler first needed the services of a
physician, in 1535, and the time when he last prescribed for a
patient, in 1618, there was plenty of trouble in England. Bloody
Queen Mary sat on the throne; and there were all kinds of quarrels
about religion and politics; and Catholics and Protestants were
killing one another in the name of God.
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