Goulston, Theodore

, an eminent English physician in the seventeenth century, was born in Northamptonshire, and was son of Mr. William Goulston, rector of Wymondham, in Leicestershire. He became probationer fellow of Merton college, Oxford, in 1596, where he took the degrees of B. and M. A. and afterwards applied himself to the study of physic, which he practised first in Oxford, and afterwards at Wymondham, where he was much resorted to for his advice. On April 30, 1610, he took the degree of doctor of physic, and became candidate of the college of physicians at London, being well approved by the president, censors, and fellows; and the year following he was made a fellow and censor of that college. He was soon introduced into very | extensive practice in the city of London, and distinguished him* self likewise to great advantage by his skill in the Latin and Greek languages, and divinity, and by his writings. His affection to the public good and to the advancement of the faculty of physic was such, that by his last will and testament he gave two hundred pounds to purchase a rent-charge for the maintenance of an annual lecture within the college of physicians of London. This lecture was to be read from time to time by one of the foui* youngest doctors in physic of the college, and to be upon two, or three, or more diseases, as the censors should direct; and to be read yearly, at a convenient season betwixt Michaelmas and Easter, upon some dead body (if procurable) on three days successively, in the forenoon and afternoon. He left likewise several books to Merton college, besides several other donations, which legacies were punctually paid by his widow Ellen, who being possessed of the impropriate parsonage of Bardwell in Suffolk, procured leave from the king to annex the same to the vicarage, and gave them both to the college of St. John’s, in Oxford. Our author died at his house within the parish of St. Martin Ludgate, May 4, 1632, and was interred with great solemnity in the church of that parish.

The public has been indebted on several occasions to the Gulstonian institution for ingenious dissertations, delivered as lectures; as those of Dr. Musgrave Dr. Fordyce’s treatise on digestion Dr. Saunders, &c. Dr. Goulston wrote, 1. “Versio Latina et paraphrasis in Aristotelis rbetoricam,” London, 1619, 1623, &c. in 4to. 2. “Aristotelis de Poetica liber Latine conversus, et analytica methodo illustratus,” London, 1623, 4to. 3. “Versio, varise Lectiones, et Annotationes critics in opuscula varia Galeni,” London, 1640, 4to, published by his friend Mr. Thomas Gataker, rector of Rotherhithe, in Surrey. ¹