Background
The son of Thomas Coxe, he was born in Somerset.
The son of Thomas Coxe, he was born in Somerset.
He was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he matriculated in 1633, graduating Bachelor of Arts 1635, and Master of Arts
1638. He took his Doctor of Medicine degree at Padua 12 December 1641, and was later incorporated at Oxford, in 1646. He associated with the Hartlib circle. He also visited Sarah Wight, one of Henry Jessey"s congregation who undertook a 75-day fast in 1647, and was then connected with radical religious groups.
Coxe became a fellow of the College of Physicians on 25 June 1649.
In the later 1650s he was in touch with Henry Oldenburg at Oxford. He contributed to Robert Boyle"s unpublished Essay of Poisons of this period.
Early in 1658 he was consulted by the family of Robert Rich, 3rd Earl of Warwick on the Earl"s health. Coxe summoned Richard Wiseman, who pronounced that Warwick was not in danger.
In 1660 he delivered the Harveian oration, and in 1662 was on the first list of Fellows nominated by the council of the Royal Society.
From 1676 to 1680 Coxe was treasurer of the College of Physicians, and in 1682 was elected president Coxe, with Edward Alston and John Micklethwaite, ensured the College took a generous line in licensing nonconformist ministers to practice medicine. While Coxe became a physician to Charles II in 1665, his views were unpopular, and his presidency of the College in the 1680s lasted only one year as he was marked out as an early Whig.
One of his acts as president was to order the printing, unusual at this period, of lectures of Walter Charleton, covering the theories of Giovanni Alfonso Borelli on the heart (without due acknowledgement).
Coxe ran into difficulties in his old age, and, avoiding his creditors, died of apoplexy in France in 1685. Coxe"s son Thomas was also a Cambridge graduate and physician.
Richard Baxter published in 1680 his funeral sermon for Coxe"s wife, Mary. In the dedicatory epistle Baxter makes it clear that he was one of Coxe"s patients.
Royal Society.