[1] At thirty years of age he entered himself as a medical student at Leyden in 1638 and attended the lectures of Adolph Vorstius, Otto Heurnius, and Johannes Walaeus.
In his inaugural dissertation[2] he defended William Harvey's theory of the circulation of the blood, and was subjected to an attack by Dr. James Primrose the following year; Drake replied.
[3][4] Drake appears to have been incorporated a doctor of medicine at Cambridge, and was admitted a candidate of the College of Physicians on 22 December 1643.
[4] A rigid presbyterian, he was implicated in Christopher Love's plot, and was arrested by order of the council of state, 7 May 1651.
Drake became minister of St. Peter's Cheap in 1653, was one of the intended commissioners at the Savoy conference (though did not attend after an administrative mistake), and occasionally conducted the morning exercise at St. Giles-in-the-Fields and that at Cripplegate.