Baldwin Hamey, MD, was born at Bruges in 1568, and studied at Leyden, where he was matriculated 28th April, 1586, and where, after an unusually extended course of study, he took the degree of doctor of medicine with the highest applause. About this time, the professors in that university were requested to select from among their graduates a fitting person for the office of physician to the Muscovite Czar, Theodore Ivanowitz, and they nominated Dr Hamey, who, by the advice of his teachers and friends, was induced to accept the appointment. He proceeded to Russia, where he remained five years, and performed the arduous and responsible duties of his office to the entire satisfaction of the Czar.
He returned to Holland in 1598, married at Amsterdam, and soon afterwards settled in London. On the 12th January, 1609-10, he was admitted a Licentiate of the College of Physicians.
Dr Hamey died on 10th November, 1640, of a pestilential fever, “plenus annis, honore, et amore,” and on the 12th was buried in the church of Allhallows, Barking, where a monument, with the following inscription, from the pen of his distinguished son, Baldwin Hamey, MD, was soon afterwards erected:-
D O M
S
BALDVINUS HAMEY,
post adeptum, summo cum honore,
apud Lugdunenses in Batavis,
supremum medicinæ gradum;
post superata prima praxeos pericula,
tantâ cum dexteritate et favore in Magni Muscovitarum Ducis
aulâ,
ut ægerrimè dimitteretur,
dimissus semel iterumque per amplissimos legatos repeteretur:
post transactos apud Londinensis, non minori fidelitate quàm
fælicitate,
quadraginta duos in eâdem arte annos:
post totam vitam suam,
cùm morum simplicitate,
tum linguaram literarumque varietate nobilitatam:
tandem morti, de quâ innumera priùs tropæa reportaverat,
in qualecunque tropæum, confectâ ætate, cessit,
anno a se nato 72, in Christo 1640:
tribus ex unicâ et unicè dilectâ uxore suâ, Sara Oeils, relictis
liberis,
qui pietatis ergos hoc monumentum utrique Parenti posuerunt.
Dr Hamey by his will left to the College twenty pounds. His portrait, by Cornelius Johnson, was extant in 1733, and then in the possession of his great-grandson, Ralph Palmer, of Little Chelsea, Esq.
William Munk