Already, in 1670, Boyle was at the height of his literary and scientific popularity, the acknowledged chief of the circle of New Philosophers in London. He had long been a valetudinary, saving his strength for his work, and holding himself aloof from uncongenial company. And he was now beginning to enjoy the ease and dignity of home life, a clever woman’s ministrations and companionship, and the thousand-and-one little amenities of a home that his bachelor life in his Oxford lodgings must have lacked. But in June 1670 he had been taken suddenly ill; “a severe paralytic distemper”, it was called; and eleven months later, in May 1671, he was writing a pathetic little letter to his old Dorsetshire friend, John Mallet of Poynington, describing in his own gentle words his invalid condition. “I have taken so many medicines,” he wrote, “and found the relief they awarded me so very slow, that it is not easy for me to tell you what I found most good by. The things which to me seem fittest to be mentioned on this occasion are that cordial medicines, especially such as peculiarly befriend the _genus nervosum_, were very frequently and not unsuccessfully administered ... that the dried flesh of vipers seemed to be one of the usefullest cordials I took; but then I persevered in taking it daily for a great while. That I seldom missed a day without taking the air, at least once, and that even when I was at the weakest, and was fain to be carried in men’s arms from my chair into the coach. That the best thing I found to strengthen my feet and legs, and which I still use, was sack turned to a brine with sea-salt and well rubbed upon the parts every morning and night with a warm hand....” Boyle’s own doctor was Edmund King—not then Sir Edmund and the King’s Physician, but a London practitioner of repute, living in Hatton Gardens; a year or two younger than Boyle; a member of the Royal Society; a friend of Willis and Petty, and a great man for dissections and experiments. It was Edmund King who was so interested in the first transfusion experiments on human subjects, and who, “with my best microscope,” noticed the appearance of living organisms in “things left in water.” And it is to be remembered that in a list of Boyle’s lost manuscripts there is one with the title “Spontaneous Generation.” It is possible that he and Dr. King may have been working together with the microscope. The “viper powder” was one of Dr. King’s prescriptions, though he is said to have preferred the “volatile salt.” It was not till some years later that Dr. King gained such celebrity by his prompt action in bleeding Charles II after his apoplectic seizure. He had a lancet in his pocket; and no other doctor was at hand.