Richard Whitlock

Richard Whitlock (1616–1666) was an English doctor, vicar, and the author of Zootomia.

Biography

Whitlock was born in London to Richard Whitlock and Katherine Burchett and baptised on 17 November 1616 in St. Peter le Poer church. He was the eldest of his father's children. One of his brothers was the controversial presbyterian minister John Whitlock (1624–1708). He took a degree in law at Oxford. He was elected a Fellow of All Souls College in 1638.

Whitlock's only published work was Zootomia, or. Observations on the Present Manners of the English: Briefly Anatomizing the Living by the Dead. (London, 1654). The book is a collection of essays, as many as fifty, on a great variety of topics. The longest essays are four on medicine, which make up a sixth of the book's length. These essays are scathing attacks on quacks and charlatans from a licensed, and dogmatic, professional doctor in the 17th century. He attacks "Pisse-prophets" and "Mountebanks" in the same breath as he attacks "Empirics", with their reliance on experiment and evidence. He seems to have encountered difficulty with his parishioners here. William Warren, in a 1712 history of the parish of Ashford, recounts that during Whitlock's time at Ashford he scratched remarks (some critical of his parishioners) onto the glass of his parsonage windows:

Whitlock married one Joan. They had a daughter Elizabeth and a son James (1651–1716), who emigrated to Virginia. Whitlock died in 1666 and was buried at St. Peter le Poer Church on 5 November.