1665/6

Following military service in the Parliamentary Calvary during the English Civil War, Thomas Sydenham returned to Oxford for three years, of which the high point was his friendship with Robert Boyle. In 1665 he married Mary Gee and bought a house in Westminster, where he began his medical practice shortly thereafter (Dewhurst, ch. 1). John Locke, widely read in medicine but unlicensed, served as his clinical assistant, while supporting Sydenham’s researches (60).