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On November 29 Pepys dined at a house of entertainment, and enjoyed good company.

“But here, above all, I was pleased to see the person who had his blood taken out. He speaks well, and did this day give the Society a relation thereof in Latin, saying that he finds himself much better since, and as a new man, but he is cracked a little in his head, though he speaks very reasonably, and very well. He had but 20s. for his suffering it, and is to have the same again tried upon him: the first sound man that ever had it tried on him in England, and but one that we hear of in France, which was a porter hired by the virtuosos.”[3] (Ibid., p. 205.)

The subject of this experiment was Arthur Coga, an indigent Bachelor of Divinity of Cambridge, aged about thirty-two. It is recorded in the Philosophical Transactions that the experiment was performed by Richard Lower and Edmund King at Arundel House on November 23, 1667, in the presence of many spectators, including several physicians. Coga, when asked why he had not the blood of some other creature transfused into him, rather than that of a sheep, replied: “Sanguis ovis symbolicam quandam facultatem habet cum sanguine Christi, quia Christus est agnus Dei.”[4] It was estimated that Coga received eight or nine ounces of blood, but he seems to have felt no effects, good or ill, and it is probable that he did not actually receive as much as this.