James Drake

James Drake (1667–1707) was an English physician and political writer, a Jacobite and Fellow of the Royal Society.

Life He was born in 1667 at Cambridge, where his father was a solicitor. He was educated at Wivelingham and Eton College, was admitted at Caius College, Cambridge, 20 March 1684, and graduated B.A. and M.A. In 1693 he went to London, and was encouraged in the study of medicine by Sir Thomas Millington. He became M.B. in 1690 and M.D. in 1694. In 1701 he was elected F.R.S., and was admitted fellow of the College of Physicians 30 June 1706.

Drake became disillusioned with his treatment at the hands of some of the Tories. He died of a fever, at Westminster, 2 March 1707.

In 1702 also Drake published The History of the Last Parliament, written in the Tory interest with the help of Anthony Hammond. It accused the Whigs of contemplating a new model of government and of traducing Queen Anne while she was a princess. The House of Lords had been investigating the report that William had plotted to secure the succession to the crown for the Elector of Hanover. Drake's pamphlet was noticed in the course of the debate. He confessed the authorship and was summoned before the House of Lords, which ordered him to be prosecuted. He was tried and acquitted. (In the past this anonymous work has been attributed to Pittis alone.) There was an answer, Occasional Thoughts (1705) on the Memorial, which is attributed to William Stephens. John Toland was paid to write another reply, Memorial of the State of England. Defoe answered, also, with The High Church Legion, or the Memorial Examined (1705).

This pamphlet gave offence to the Duke of Marlborough and Godolphin, who were beginning to separate themselves from the Tories. The book was also presented as a libel by the grand jury of London on 31 August 1705, and burnt by the common hangman. The Queen mentioned it in her speech to the new parliament (27 October 1705). After voting that the church was not in danger, both houses of parliament (14 December) requested the queen to punish persons responsible for scandalous insinuations to the contrary. A proclamation was issued offering reward for the discovery of the authors of the memorial. The printer made a statement implicating three members of the House of Commons, Poley, John Ward III, and Sir Humphry Mackworth, but stated that the pamphlet was brought to him by two women, one of them masked, and the printed copies delivered by him to porters, some of whom were arrested. No further discoveries, however, were made. In 1706 Drake had also edited an edition of Leicester's Commonwealth, with preface.

Medical works

A medical treatise called Anthropologia Nova, or a New System of Anatomy, was published just before Drake's death in 1707. Contractually the book was a legacy of a project involving instead Clopton Havers, author of Osteologia nova (1691), who had died in 1702; and as a consequence used plates copied from Stephan Blancard. Drake's wife Judith edited the work and secured a dedication to Henry Somerset, 2nd Duke of Beaufort.

Anthropologia Nova reached a second edition in 1717, and a third in 1727. It was edited by William Wagstaffe, and was popular up to the publication of William Cheselden's Anatomy.

Drake's Orationes Tres on medical subjects were printed in 1742, with a preface by Edward Milward. He contributed a paper concerning the influence of respiration on the action of the heart to the Philosophical Transactions. The baptism of a daughter Ann is recorded.