Thomas Bonham

Thomas Bonham M.D. (c. 1564c. 1628) was an English physician, now remembered for his involvement in Dr. Bonham's Case, of legal rather than medical significance. Life Bonham was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1581, and M.A. in 1585. He was incorporated B.A. at Oxford in 1584, and on 9 July 1611 was M.D. there. He practised his profession in London, and was an assistant to the Society of Medicine-Chirurgians. His death occurred about 1629. Bonham's Case Bonham was a physician by qualification, with a Cambridge medical degree (date now unclear), styling himself a medical doctor by 1602. He was not thereby qualified to practise in London by administering internal remedies, without a license from the College of Physicians of London. Bonham took the side of the surgeons, then a separate profession, who in 1605 petitioned parliament, unsuccessfully, for full rights as doctors. Then putting himself forward for examination by the College of Physicians in 1605, and 1606, he had a confrontation with Henry Atkins of the college on the second occasion. Finding himself in Newgate Prison for contempt of the college, he was freed by his lawyer under habeas corpus.