Richard Frewin

Richard Frewin, M.D. (c.1681–1761) was an English physician and professor of history.

Early life and education Frewin, the son of Ralph Frewin of London, was admitted as a King's Scholar at Westminster in 1693, and elected thence to a Westminster studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1698. He took the degrees of B.A. in 1702, M.A. in 1704, M.B. in 1707, and M.D. in 1711.

Career In 1708, he was described at the foot of a Latin poem which he contributed to 'Exequiæ Georgio principi Danise ab Oxoniensi academia solutæ' (Oxford, 1708) as professor of chemistry; he was also, in 1711, rhetoric reader at Christ Church. As a physician he had an excellent reputation; he attended Dean Aldrich on his deathbed. Elizabeth Woodward, and Mrs. Graves, daughter of Peter Cranke.

Frewin bequeathed £2,000 in trust for the king's scholars of Westminster elected to Christ Church, and another £2,000 in trust for the physicians of the Radcliffe Infirmary, and left his house in Oxford, now known as Frewin Hall, to the Regius Professor of Medicine for the time being. His library of history and literature, consisting of 2,300 volumes, he left to the Radcliffe Library. There is in that library a volume containing a collection of dried specimens of plants made by him, with his notes in manuscript on their medicinal uses. Portraits are in the hall and common room at Christ Church, and a bust, presented by Dr. Hawley in 1757, in the library there.