He was admitted, by mandamus, to a doctor's degree at Cambridge; and became a fellow of the Royal Society, and a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. He tried his luck at Northampton, and found he was not needed there; he became an inhabitant of Hampstead, but failed to ingratiate himself with the opulent gentry who in those days resided in that suburb; and lastly fixed himself in Bloomsbury Square (ætat. 27), where he resided till his death. After some delay, he became a physician of St. Thomas's Hospital, and an assistant physician of Christ's Hospital--read the Gulstonian Lectures before the College of Physicians, in 1755--and was also Krohnian Lecturer. In speeches and papers to learned societies, and to various medical treatises, amongst which may be mentioned his "De Dysentariâ Commentarius," he tried to wheedle himself into practice. But his efforts were of no avail. Sir John Hawkins, in his absurd Life of Dr. Johnson, tells a good story of Saxby's rudeness to the author of the "Pleasures of Imagination." Saxby was a custom-house clerk, and made himself liked in society by saying the rude things which other people had the benevolence to feel, but lacked the hardihood to utter. One evening, at a party, Akenside argued, with much warmth and more tediousness, that physicians were better and wiser men than the world ordinarily thought. "Doctor," said Saxby, "after all you have said, my opinion of the profession is this: the ancients endeavoured to make it a science, and failed; and the moderns to make it a trade, and succeeded."