Richard Morton, pastor turned physician, was born in Worcestershire and like his father trained for the ministry.1 He received the BA degree at Oxford in 1656, took orders in the church, and, in 1659 after receiving the MA, was chaplain in the Foley family. Later he became Vicar of Kinver, but, when Parliament passed the Act of Uniformity which required comprehensive approval of the Book of Common Prayer, Morton began the study of medicine, being unable to accept the requirements. On the nomination of the prince of Orange, he received the MD from Oxford in 1670, settled in London, became a Fellow of the College of Physicians, and later physician to the King.
Morton, as successful in medicine as in the ministry, left a great treatise on tuberculosis which contained an excellent clinical description of wasting.2 He described not only the physical deterioration from pulmonary tuberculosis but included