William Cole (physician)

William Cole, born in 1635, was educated at Gloucester Hall, Oxford, as a member of which society he graduated MB on 7 August 1660, and MD on 9 July 1666.

Haller calls him iatromathematicus et hypothesium inventor, and by his writings Cole belongs unmistakably to the mechanical school of medicine, though he did not meddle with mathematics.

But he early recognised the practical superiority of Sydenham's more natural method, and readily adopted that great physician's treatment for the small-pox.

His first work, De Secretione Animali, is chiefly physiological, giving an explanation of secretion on mechanical principles, but it is entirely deductive or conjectural, not experimental.

His last tract on a case of epilepsy was written in answer to Dr. Thomas Hobart of Cambridge, who, after the fashion of the day, asked his advice in a Latin letter.