Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Castle, George
CASTLE, GEORGE, M.D. (1635?–1673), physician, only son of John Castle, a doctor of medicine of Oxford of 10 July 1644, by Grisagon his wife, was born in or about 1635. After a good preliminary education at Thame grammar school, under Dr. William Burt, he was admitted a commoner of Balliol College, Oxford, on 8 April 1652, at the age of seventeen, and proceeded B.A. on 18 Oct. 1654, M.A. on 29 May 1657. Meanwhile he had gained a probationary fellowship at All Souls in 1655, and accumulating his degrees in physic proceeded M.D. as a member of that house on 21 June 1665. Castle now settled in town, where he practised, as his father had done, in the parish of St. Margaret's, Westminster. In February 1669 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and, as he himself indicates in the epistle dedicatory prefixed to his ‘Chymical Galenist,’ had thoughts of presenting himself before the College of Physicians for examination as a candidate. Afterwards, by the influence of his friend Martin Clifford, master of the Charterhouse, Castle was appointed physician to that institution, and obtained a respectable share of business. But giving way, if we may credit Wood's statement, to habits of free living, he died of fever on 12 Oct. 1673. His will, wherein he is described as of the parish of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, is dated 25 Sept. in that year, and was proved by his relict Anne on 16 Oct. following (Reg. in P. C. C. 122, Pye). Castle was the author of ‘The Chymical Galenist: a Treatise, wherein the Practise of the Ancients is reconcil'd to the new Discoveries in the Theory of Physick; shewing, That many of their Rules, Methods, and Medicins, are useful for the Curing of Diseases in this Age, and in the Northern parts of the World. In which are some Reflections upon a Book, intituled, Medela Medicinæ,’ 8vo, London, 1667.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iii. 998–9; Wood's Fasti Oxon. (Bliss), ii. 181, 200, 282–3.]