John Floyer

Sir John Floyer (March 3 1649 - February 1, 1734), English physician and author, was the third child and second son of Elizabeth Babington and Richard Floyer, of Hints Hall. Hints is a quiet village lying a short distance from Lichfield in Staffordshire. He was educated at Oxford.

He practised in Lichfield, and it was by his advice that Dr Johnson, when a child, was taken by his mother to be touched by Queen Anne for the king's evil on March 30, 1714. Floyer was an advocate of cold bathing, introduced the practice of counting the rate of the pulse-beats, and gave an early account of the pathological changes in the lungs associated with emphysema.