William Salmon

William Salmon (1644–1713) was English empiric doctor, advertising himself as "Professor of Physick", and a writer of medical texts.

He is not to be confused with another William Salmon, author of the architectural pattern-book Palladio Londinensis (1734).

He was born 2 June 1644 (inscription under a portrait in Ars Anatomica). Enemies asserted that his first education was from a charlatan with whom he travelled, and to whose stock-in-trade he succeeded. His travels extended to New England.

Salmon set up looking for patients near the Smithfield gate of St. Bartholomew's Hospital. He treated all diseases, sold special prescriptions of his own, as well as drugs in general, cast horoscopes, and professed alchemy. He moved to the Red Balls in Salisbury Court off Fleet Street. In 1684, after a short residence in George Yard, near Broken Wharf, Salmon moved to the Blue Balcony by the ditch side, near Holborn Bridge, where he continued to reside till after 1692. He used to attend the meetings of a new sect at Leathersellers' Hall.

Salmon accumulated a large library, had two microscopes, a set of Napier's bones, and other mathematical instruments, some arrows and curiosities which he brought from the West Indies, and Dutch paintings. He died in 1713. His portrait is prefixed to his edition of Diemerbroek, and to his 'Ars Anatomica,' which appeared posthumously in 1714. Several other engraved portraits are mentioned by Bromley, among them being one by Vandergucht.

Salmon published in 1671 Synopsis Medicinæ, or a Compendium of Astrological, Galenical, and Chymical Physick, in three books. The first book is dedicated to Dr. Peter Salmon, a wealthy physician of the time; the third to Thomas Salmon of Hackney, but the author does not claim to be related to either. Laudatory verses included one by Henry Coley, and state the work to be an admirable compound of Hermes, Hippocrates, Galen, and Paracelsus. A second edition appeared in 1681, a reissue in 1685, and a fourth edition in 1699. Richard Jones of the Golden Lion in Little Britain, who published this book, brought out in 1672 Salmon's Polygraphice, the Art of Drawing, Engraving, Etching, Limning, Painting, Washing, Varnishing, Colouring, and Dyeing, dedicated to Peter Stanley of Alderley, who may have consulted Salmon professionally. Besides the mechanical parts of art, descriptions are given of the ways of representing the passions and emotions in portraiture. At the end Salmon advertises his pills, which are to be had for three shillings a box, and are good for all diseases.

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