Helkiah Crooke

?-?

Vol I

Pg 177

b.? d.?

AB Cantab(1595-6) MB(1599) MD(1604) FRCP(1620)

This biography is part of a series of historical obituaries, originally published in print. As products of their time periods, some biographies contain language which is inappropriate and offensive and present biased accounts of physicians’ lives and work that do not disclose unethical and discriminatory behaviour. As an establishment organisation, the RCP, its members, and the way they are written about, have often reflected societal power structures that favour dominant groups. We aim to redress these biases through ongoing work.

Below is the biography as originally published in 1878.

Helkiah Crooke, MD, was born in Suffolk, and admitted a scholar of St John’s college, Cambridge, on Sir Henry Billingsley’s foundation, 11th November, 1591. He proceeded AB 1595-6, then visited Leyden, and was entered on the physic line there 6th November, 1596. He returned to Cambridge and graduated MB 1599, MD 1604. He was admitted a Candidate of the College of Physicians 25th June, 1613, and a Fellow 21st April, 1620; was Censor in 1627, 1628, 1629, 1630, 1631; Anatomy Reader, 1629; and on the 25th May, 1635, resigned his fellowship, as he was then going to retire into the country. Dr Crooke was governor of Bethlem hospital in 1632, and is the first medical man who is known to have been head of that institution.(1)

He was the author of -
A Description of the Body of Man, together with the Controversies thereunto belonging, collected and translated out of all the best authors of anatomy Fol. Lond. 1616 – 2nd ed. Fol. Lond. 1631.
An Explanation of the Fashion and Use of Three-and-Fifty Instruments of Chirurgery Fol. Lond. 1631.

A small whole-length portrait of Dr Crooke, by Droeshout, is prefixed to the second edition of his anatomy.

William Munk

[References:(1) Journal of Mental Science, vol. xxii, p.219]

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