Background
He was son of the Review William Dickinson, rector of Appleton in Berkshire (now Oxfordshire), by his wife Mary, daughter of Edmund Colepepper, and was born on 26 September 1624.
He was son of the Review William Dickinson, rector of Appleton in Berkshire (now Oxfordshire), by his wife Mary, daughter of Edmund Colepepper, and was born on 26 September 1624.
He received his primary education at Eton College, and in 1642 entered Merton College, Oxford, where he was admitted one of the Eton postmasters. He took the degree of Bachelor of Arts 22 June 1647, and was elected probationer-fellow of his college, On 27 November 1649 he had the degree of Master of Arts conferred upon him. Applying himself to the study of medicine, he obtained the degree of Doctor of Medicine on 3 July 1656.
John Evelyn once went to see him and recorded the visit:
Evelyn also associated Dickinson with the Interregnum Oxford group of "virtuosi" that later contributed to the formation of the Royal Society.
On leaving college he began to practise as a physician in a house in High Street, Oxford, where he stayed for nearly two decades. The college made him superior reader of Linacre"s lectures, in succession to Richard Lydall, a post which he held for some years.
He was elected honorary fellow of the College of Physicians in December 1664, but he was treated as somewhat suspect and was not admitted a fellow till 1677. In 1684 he came up to London and settled in Saint Martin"s Lane.
He took over the house of Thomas Willis.
Among his patients here was Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington, whom he cured of a hernia. By him the doctor was recommended to the king, Charles II, who appointed him one of his physicians in ordinary and physician to the household (1677). Charles took the doctor into special favour and had a laboratory built in Whitehall Palace.
Here the king could retire with George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham and Dickinson, who exhibited chemical experiments.
On the accession of James II (1685), Dickinson was confirmed in his office as king"s physician, and held it until the abdication of James (1688). Troubled with the stone, Dickinson retired from practice and spent the remaining nineteen years of his life in study and in the making of books
He died on 3 April 1707, aged 83, and was buried in the church of Saint Martin-in-the-Fields, where a monument bearing a Latin inscription was erected to his memory.
Royal Society.