Sir Edmund King (1629–1709) was a successful surgeon and an experimental anatomist of animals and humans. He experimented with early blood transfusions, for example bleeding a sheep into a dog, and transfusing the blood of a calf into a sheep. In 1667 he did a private trial on an Oxford student, who was paid 20 shillings to receive the blood of a sheep. He survived, although after the death of a human participant in a French trial, King stopped experimenting.

King published papers on ants and other insects, and conducted research on the reproductive glands of bulls, guinea pigs and men. He believed that animal tissues, including human, were made up of liquors, tubes and fibres. King also attended Charles II, and after reviving the king from a fit by bleeding him, he was awarded £1,000 from the Privy Council, which King never received.