Thomas Lodge a British physician, lawyer and man of letters, was admitted to London’s Royal College of Physicians on this date in 1610. Originally trying to support himself by writing and taking dangerous sea voyages, Lodge eventually switched to medicine, obtaining his first medical degree in 1598 from the University of Avignon and a second from Oxford University four years later. In 1612, he died while fighting the plague epidemic in London. His “Treatise on the Plague," as well as several other medical works, was well received during his lifetime. He also wrote “Rosalynde,” a romance that William Shakespeare eventually used as the basis of his play “As You Like It.”

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