SIR THOMAS BROWNE AND HIS BOOKS.

H. S. CARTER, M.D., D.P.H.

^er Thomas Browne one of the of our who th?Ught apostles profession, had a jn ^.e Writings positive value for every student of medicine, and library ?f ten books for medical students, compiled with a ln certa^ Victorian Browne's Medici has seventh s piety, Religio place, Wlched between Epictetus and Don Quixote. Religio Medici, with its biosphere redolent of the odours of mortality, is a queer book to mend to youth; it has its conceits an^ though certainly entertaining Pa^ches to a sense of eloquent enough convey of the magnificence p^Ul?^e^ ls^ jn rightly used, even to one who would be unlikely to grasp the

? Mentions of the writer. Osier had his introduction to Browne fror " ^ ne^T J?hnson, his teacher ; warden and founder of Weston School 0r0n^?' and later one of the three dedicatees of the famous Textbook ?f M e^?^ne- It is remarkable, writes Cushing in his biography of Osier, like should have cared for Tv, ^^"c^urchman Johnson particularly Sir ' 0rnas Browne, but that he should have been able to transmit aPPrecia.tion to a boy of seventeen is truly amazing.' This is true, n? ...^y likemce Whitewnire of01 Selborneaeioorne andana others, Was"3.a ^aSol ordinary boy.uuy. Johnson,junnson, ?? clergyman with a scientific urge. He was especially interested in 1Ql?gy, he used a microscope, and he was strongly drawn to t of the f?ion?lr phenomena of nature. He read to his pupils passages fro Thomas Browne in *ad illustration of the beauty of English an ye Probably something of the temperament and practice of t e age who Norwich, also was interested in natural atld also consumedly p: strove to reconcile his religion with his science. e in from Rising this early acquaintance with Browne ran like a tinea through the whole woof of Osier's life, and he lost no oppor unity Commending the work of the naturalist and antiquary of Norwich as compendium of P counsels of perfection, particularly suitable for t e em ysician. But the truth is, these old books, unless fu y anno a ardly t0 hg TH,_ understood today. ~ j uuuerstuoci toaay. Ap, a mercer in T) and the son of "frOtllclS rowne, one of four children of Upton in ^eapsid ?f Thomas Browne, merchant ^ranc^son Michael's Cheap on Cheshire *n of St. ^onc^on parish the time 19th Oct ^?rn Plot, 1605, about 6r' ^ear Gunpowder with Lear. Shak his dramatic edifice King WaS crown*n? later. and Milton three years ^?eUibrancltS^eareWES ^orn *n *he following year a The of men and sev * 6 which was to be an age great ? century Periocl science and medicine of lntense individualistic performance in art, 10 20 GLASGOW MEDICAL JOURNAL

was passing its first decade very quietly. It was to be stormy enough later. Browne's father, the mercer, died early, and his mother, who was of Sussex stock?Browne remembers his grandfather Garroway's house at Lewes?soon afterwards married Sir Thomas Dutton of Gloucester who held a post in the Government of Ireland. Young Thomas may have been helped by his kinsman Richard Browne of Upton while he lived, ?but he died when the boy was nineteen. Dr. Johnson, who wrote a biography of Browne, said he was left to the rapacity of his guardian, helpless and unprotected ; but there is no reason to believe that his mother forsook him or that his step-father, though a high-tempered man, was inconsiderate. Information about these early years is scanty ; but he was admitted to Winchester on a scholarship in August, 1616, and six years later he went up to Oxford. In 1623 we find him a commoner of Broadgates Hall, which was exalted to Pembroke College during Browne's years at Oxford. Dr. Johnson, himself a Pembroke man who ' later described the College as a nest of singing birds,' was proud that Browne was its earliest distingushed graduate. Browne must have been remarked early for this learning, for as Senior Commoner in 1624 he delivered a Latin oration at the ceremony changing the hall to a college, in which he described the new College as rising like a Phoenix out of its ruins. It seems quite likely, as Osier remarked, that Browne might have been seen about this time reading the second edition of Burton's Anatomy ?of Melancholy, which was issued in 1624. It is a book that should have made some impression on its alma mater. The principal of Broadgates who became first master of Pembroke was Dr. Clayton, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, a versatile man, for he was professor of Music in Gresham College also, and from him it is possible Browne got his inclination to study medicine. Perhaps between 1626 when he graduated and 1629 when he became M.A., he may have studied physic, for he is said to have practised it in Oxfordshire about this time. But he would have learned little clinical medicine in the Oxford of this period and it is probable that he did not begin any serious medical study until he went abroad. About 1630 or 1631 he accompanied his step-father to Ireland, and soon afterwards set out on the grand tour, to France, Italy, and Holland. It is strange that there are practically no records of this trip, because Browne was hardly one to travel without filling his note-books, ' even if, as Dr. Johnson said, he traversed no unknown seas or Arabian deserts.' He went to Montpellier first, which as a medical school was then in decline. It had been falling away since the Popes had left Avignon and the wars, of religion had spread over the country. But he would be confronted there with Catholic symbols unpleasing to a man of his class, and as he afterwards says, he soon learned to remove his hat when a cross or crucifix hove in sight. Thomas was an adaptive man. He had to be in the times he lived if he wanted peace. Montpellier must have been SIR THOMAS BROWNE?CARTER 21 greatest when Rabelais lived there. Now, though still influenced by encal authority, it leaned towards liberalism. The faculty taught that ' ' organic soul or vital principle animated the body and was the ^ ^eory v^a^sm which Descartes rejected. But it had.Sesome fascination for Thomas Browne which is reflected in his ^ writings. Browne must have listened to Riverius (L,azare Riviere, ^^ontpellier,-1655) who introduced the teaching of chemistry there and was a a^voca^e ?f antimony. He probably used Riviere's Praxis Medica, e leading text-book at that time. ^rotn ... Montpellier, Browne went to Padua where Harvey had been y years earlier. It was still head of the European schools of science. ere ? probably heard Sanctorius (Santorio Santorio, 1561-1636), earlY iatro-physicists, who investigated metabolism and talked 0p ' perspiration and wrote De Statica Medica. The picture of ji.^lnsens^bleseated in his balance is a familiar one in the physiology books. inally Browne headed North to the new University of I,eyden, ^ ere he may have met Descartes. It is said that here he took his doctor's 66 there is no of this. Osier once searched the Un" 1-1 certainty versity register of matriculants but could not find him. 6 re^Urnec^ England in 1634 and settled at Shibden Dale near Hal' ax> n?t to practise his profession apparently, though he may have e a little, but to recruit his health after ship-wreck, disease and the gours of his continental tour. It was here at Upper Shibden Hall, and this a , .U time, that he wrote Religio Medici: book, be it noted, a ' man's work. He himself is insistent about this. M ?WaS y?un? ^ *s a miracle of he but seems to think that ^ thirty years,' says, sickens round that so one is not so immature af J^?e age, perhaps a^er However, like Ulysses he had seen men and cities t^i mus^ have had a good deal stored in his memory if not on his ^ ^ro^es^s *kat wr?te without the help of any good book (th t is, he was away from a library), and for his private exercise and action. This of Browne's life is ^ period practically undocumented, years later he had correspondents in Halifax. *le was invited by influential friends to settle in Norwich, with which town as far as is known he had no connections. p ' previous ably old Oxford friends were behind the request, for in July, 1637, ecanie M.U. at Oxford. He practised in Norwich for the next forty- ^ ' years, living a peaceful, uneventful studious life, much resorted to *s admirable skill in physic.' In 1641 he married Dorothy Mileham, ^ bride at twenty being sixteen years younger than her bridegroom, " ' ^ ^rowne was a of such to her h lady symmetrical proportion worthy and, both in the graces of her body and mind, that they seemed to e together by a kind of natural magnetism.' Dorothy, who was the c s most phonetic speller, seems to have been an excellent wife and i-1 GLASGOW MEDICAL JOURNAL

mother, bearing ten children, only four of whom survived their parents. This despite Thomas Browne's view, as was Milton's, that mankind would be better propagated like trees, for he deemed the act of pro- ' creation the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life, nor is there anything that will more deject his cooled imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece of folly he hath com- mitted.' However, family life seems to have developed and run smoothly and delightfully in the doctor's house at Norwich. Dame Dorothy became an able chatelaine who watched over her husband's and her family's daily welfare with loving competence and the proper amount of anxiety, which care was extended in double measure to her grandchildren when in due course they appeared. There would be times of great worry as when the plague hit Norwich in 1665 and carried off about 3,000 people ; or a little later, when the town was stricken by malignant smallpox. Both episodes must have kept the doctor busy and his wife anxious. But they ' won through to serene old age. Browne was a good doctor. Let me be sick myself if sometimes the malady of my patient be not a disease to me/ he wrote.

His Books.

Religio Medici was written as a private exercise and first was circulated among friends. It was debased by transcription, until when it was surreptitiously printed in 1642, it was regarded by its author as corrupt, and an authorised edition was issued in 1643. There were eight English editions in the author's lifetime. Very rapidly it became, popular and excited attention by the novelty of its paradoxes, the dignity of its sentiment, and what Charles Lamb, who would have liked to have met ' the author, called the beautiful obliquities,' no less than by the strength of its language. It soon reached the continent where its orthodoxy was discussed. It was assailed for infidelity and scientific heresies, and placed ' ' on the Index.' The Germans said that seeds of atheistical impiety are so scattered through this book that it can hardly be read without danger of infection.' But in France old Gui Patin approved it, cursed the Germans and maintained a lasting admiration for Browne so that as late as 1664 he could greet Edward Browne very kindly in Paris, asking him It is not to be many things about his father. forgotten that Sir Kenelm Digby, play-boy of the age, friend of Ben Jonson, and son of Everard Digby who perished for his complicity in the Gunpowder Plot, got hold of an early copy, read it through the night, and by next morning had produced a voluminous criticism which he published before the authorised edition of the Religio was issued. Digby had early become famous for his styptic and cure-all, the 'sympathetic powder,' exsiccated ferrous sulphate, said to be a miraculous remedy for nose bleeding and for wounds of all sorts. Digby's criticisms described by Coleridge as pedantic are interesting SIR THOMAS BROWNE?CARTER 23

^aVe SUrv^ve(l? often attached to editions of the Religio. John Aubrey said. ?f the ' book that it first opened my understanding.' He had an C0P^' from the press,, in 1642. e igio Medici is the work of a physician, scholar, philosopher and ? who . is to his r trying reconcile his scientific attitude of mind with ?US ^e^e^s' anc^ naturally enough in those days it was thought to savo?Ur of to us it seems almost a work of i ^an?erously scepticism, though ^ also the work of a man with a command of jan magnificent which he used with stunning power at intervals in a long drawn- 0ut^es^ra^egic battle between the of his which ke conflicting thoughts mind, inp00-1^110^ masterly cunning to his own satisfaction. It is a most composed effort to reconcile doubt and even frank disbelief w^nj?Us*yUmble faith in the essentials of the Christian Its tortous- ness religion. S, a,nc^ ?bliquities are often due to the author's effort to put down to those in what he without himself away believes giving 3 and saysse^c^ that heresies. However, he is often plain enough, early ^ zeal terms supers 1 lon ' inclined to that which naturally misguided we an elevation, bu* he cannot hear the Ave Maria bell without has himself as a loya so no prejudicies in religion, but regards the the Church and the scrip Church of England. However, where but uses his own fa*l him he borrows neither from Rome nor Geneva, from the eav reason. is not ^ And he says of his book that it pickt of o\\ n r any but bred the weeds and tares my Author, amongst Error He is ' the troops of cautious : Many have too rashly charged and He feels that beca remain as trophies with the enemies of Truth. e is himself so ong a physician and an anatomist, and has devoted He knows he has passe science, the world may think he has no religion. ' heresies have been with through some trials, my greener studies polished and can In errors.' But he has reached a where he sa>, phi point ?^?Puiant an where isis no no man man more more parauuxicai truth? seemsuuuuie-iaceu, double-faced, mere there paradoxical HlVsolfpi... Curiously enough he ^self, but in I love to keep the road.' divinity than in Se<* ants and the wisdom of their maker more in the bees, spiders ' narrow engines e whales, elephants or dromedaries: in these naturalist. ^?re curious mathematics.' He was an inquisitive the is like a symphonic Kdigio has to be read very carefully, for thing it is twis e an Prose or theme running through poem, but the thread e. lose of the w o twined by the author so that it is easy to grip ingenious an am we have more of Before we get we find that half-way through writing tha* a is more fine philosopher to deal with, says Gosse. There not written as profound in the book, but then it was thinking autho ^an the of its didactic exercise. It was, if you like, case-book ' be in possession spiritual malady. He complains, a man may just truth as He is very imaginative of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.' arid consideration of tnor a } like Montaigne got strangely exalted by 24 GLASGOW MEDICAL JOURNAL

' He is glad that continual raking into the bowels of the deceased.' has. not led to any insensibility in himself. Like Montaigne he considers the soul, and fails to find any place for it among the organs of the body, ' ' even in the brain. So he decides on its inorganity and finely concludes, ' Thus we are men, and we know not how : there is something in us that can be without us, and will be after us.: though it is strange that it hath no history what it was before us nor cannot tell how it entered in us.'. So it goes on. The great phrases ring out. He has grand notes in his beginnings and endings. In an age when thought was tending to material- ism he. had that sort of mind to which the supernatural view of things was still credible. So wrote Walter Pater. Coleridge was led away by ' the first part to the conclusion that had Sir Thomas Browne lived nowadays, he would probably have been a very ingenious and. bold infidel,', but later he gave him credit for his unshaken faith. Indeed Browne condemned the irreligion of Machiavel and dismissed the ' impieties of I,ucian as the Rhetorick of Satan.' There is a good deal of biography in the second part of the Religio. He tells us that he has no common antipathies and is at home anywhere. ' I am no plant that will not prosper out of a garden. All places, all airs make unto me one country; I am in England everywhere, and under any meridian.' He convinced himself that scientific investigation and proof by trial were not incompatible with the beliefs of a sincere. Christian. But he was no logician, like Pascal, and not a penetrative thinker. He believed in witches, and says so in the Religio, but he has been somewhat, if not wholly,. exonerated from responsibility in the witch-trial of 1664, when two women were condemned. The judge was Sir Matthew Hale and Browne was called as an expert; the women were hanged. Religio Medici is a splendid visionary treatise written in bewitching language, in which the author appears to be dreamily passing a summer's day meandering through magic country. It holds little for the un- imaginative man. It is besides as a whole, a confession of Christian faith, qualified, it must be admitted, by the insistence of the right to be sceptical as the writer may select, for he assumes the eclectic attitude ; also it is a collection of his views and opinions on matters he thinks relevant to his religious study, expressed with prodigal fancy and much weaving of ' words. It contains Browne's beautiful evening hymn, The night is ' come, like to the day,' of which he says, This is the Dormative I take to bedward ; I need no other laudanum than this to make me sleep.' Not so popular, perhaps, if the word popularity in the ordinary sense can be applied to any writing of Browne's, not so popular, but displaying Browne's rolling language at its very best with divers coruscations at his most glittering are Hydrotaphia or Urn-burial (1658) and the Garden of SIR THOMAS BROWNE?CARTER

(2yy ' usually printed together. The former work is consequent upon a er of funerary urns found at Walsingham being submitted to 116 aS ^oca^ for his were Saxon in th antiquary report. They origin ?r?wne them but he made it an occasion for ^ thought Roman, er noble prose-poem full of meditations on human mortality and disquisitions on funeral rites and burial customs of all ages, the w^e6 seas?ned with much reference to the classics and antiquarian lore. incident of the urns as a pretext for this intellectual prowl rou^es of a of it ?n ^ graveyards all time, and makes very interesting thing CUn?Us an(l to the student of the archaic and the con- no' satisfying ' ^an?uage- The.' historic shudder exploited long before Fl uUr ' ^ought ?f it. How the old man rhapsodizes : Time which ant*1^Ua^es and hath an art to make dust of all hath yet antiquities, things, S^are<^ minor monuments.' And here is that which ev purple patch rtl0(lern ' 1-V1 ?^u.vme.uequivalent uiof iviucauiey s scnoomoy knowsKnows. : Whatwin" >?8song Macauley's schoolboy .. the syrensSVro?? sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid him among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture. He seems to have approved the early practice of burning the body, ana of th?ught the effect a of his bones purifying of flame. He had horror having tampered with, but himself suffered this indignity. He had no '?king for the notion that skulls might be used as drinking bowls, tie mentions in this He work his discovery of the substance known as adipocere. was the ' first to describe it, In an ten buried ui the hydropical body, years we met with a fat where the nitre earth churchyard, concretion, and the salt and lixivious liquor of the body, had coagulate arge UmPs of fat into the consistence of the hardest Castile soap. The ' Egyptians disliked so is become Mizraim burning, mummy cures for wounds and lhe * e Pharaoh is sold for balsams. n'erchancllSe;phrases man coins are J?b intoxicating, sonorous as extracts from t e oo and ' as of magical anything in the Arabian Nights. But the inequi y oblivion scattereth her and deals with the Of tnp-n blindly poppy, with the memory " and deals lJUUU1^ scattereth her poppy, The later pages of men ^^nc^on to merit of perpetuity.' In this book some ^ydrotafih^1011^ even niore sonorous and rhapsodical. ?f the Ua-are and the whole tone of disavowed creeps in, ' formerly live readers something, To book6^'C^Sni^a^an" Browne leaves his ' in ' to be anything indeed is /? ^ ourselves ; we must be Ready a^a*n of the six foot as the moles ecs^ ever and as content with us for ' of indisposeth Adrianus^^eingaS sa^s' *he l?ng habit living ' in ^rU^ in ashes, and pompous an 1 *S a no^e anhual, splendid the ' of gravee" ^ 'ulvis et umbra sumus. The last chapter Hydrotaphia, never Writes g ' writing that has nierset is a piece of prose been Maugham, in our literature-' being the disposition iCcPfSedCH ?f^yrus or the Quincunx?a quincunx ^ve of the a treatise in^a square, one placed in the centre square?is 2(3 GLASGOW MEDICAL JOURNAL on gardens of all forms in all ages, including the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and other famous prospects. It is an outlandish and difficult literary production and the gardener is often a mystic. According to Browne there are quincunxes all over the place as well as in gardens. He cherished this word which had astrological origins from the school of Lilly, Dr. Dee, and old Ashmole the antiquary, all of whom Browne had dealings with. Trees, stars, plants can all be arranged in fives. The constellation of the Hyades is a quincunx, which allows Thomas another flashing phrase. It is midnight in March and he is tired of writing, so, ' the quincunx of Heaven runs low and 'tis time to close the five ports ' of knowledge is the famous beginning of a purple patch ; and the end, ' for it is too long, magnificent as it is, to quote, To keep our eyes open longer, were but to act our Antipodes. The huntsmen are up in America, and they are already past their first sleep in Persia . . . Browne may have derived from John Evelyn, the diarist, some hints useful in the Garden of Cyrus. Evelyn was of course a great gardener, and quotes Browne in his.S*7v?. He visited Browne in 1671 and records in his diary his impression of the physician's fine house and garden. Browne showed him round Norwich. Walter Pater regarded the mysteries of the quincunx as part of the portrait of Browne himself. Certainly he was a complex character, and this book in parts is almost unreadable, congested, turgid with odd words, splendid though some of them sound. It contains passages of strangely ornate rolling language. A Letter to a Friend, usually bound up with the Religio is now attributed to Browne's later years, as is Christian Morals (published posthumously, 1716), a grave work far removed from the spritely writings of his youth. The Letter to a Friend is described by Pater as the best justification for Browne's literary reputation. In it the r.uthor certainly returns to the manner of the works of his maturity. But it is unique in itself, like his other books. It is actually the physician's account, as it might be extracted from his case book, of the illness and death from tuberculosis of a patient known both to him and his correspondent, with of course Brownian embellishment and incursions into strange pathologies. He notes that the man had suffered from rickets. He describes the progress of disease as only he could and noticed how the patient's face lost its own specific character and took on the look of his family, a sign, he says, ' not noticed by Hippocrates ; how, as emaciation proceeded, I never more lively beheld the starved characters of Dante in any living face.' There was nothing of particular scientific interest in the case. He noticed that his patient died when the moon was in motion from the Meridian, and proceeds to consider the influence of the stars and the ebb and flow of the sea on man's passing. He quotes Jerome Cardan and others, and ' remarks, Many Temples early gray have outlived the Psalmist's Period.' There is- a lot of fine language in this letter, which is a curiosity for a SIR THOMAS BROWNE?CARTER 27

^ledical mind. Towards the end it falls away and loses character and ln^? like the of his Christian Mo /^S some^ng grave preachment

-^r?wne s bulkiest work remains to be P considered, the Pseudodoxia Pldeniica or Vulgar Errors, published in 1646. This is not aimed at the rr?rs of the common peoples ; not at popular superstition and uneducated ?no ' ranee, but is deliberately directed unto the knowing and leading r ?f learning.' The volume surprises us today with the astounding S e<^uca*-ed classes of Browne's time in the of c professional reign arles I. Browne was probably impelled to write this book from his 6 6 ' "^orc^ bacon's ideas and as to the Use of r> opinions expressed 0 s ' and the that accrue from a P advantages might drawing up a en^ar of Doubts, Falsehoods, and Popular Errors.' There had been a Previous book by one Dr. Primrose, but its calibre may be judged fr?m the fact that one of the errors Primrose exposed was Harvey s discovery of the circulation of the blood. Browne's book is difficult to quote ' from, but he dealt with the Death Watch, a sheathwinged grey insect' ; that have no and so are unable to lie own and elephants joints, sleep against trees ; that the horse has no gall (Browne was wrong here; he thought the dilated hepatic duct was a gall-bladder) ; that a s badger legs are shorter on one side than the other. He dealt wit basilisks or from a cock s under a toac ' cockatrices?hatched egg a Serpent, conceit as a monstrous the brood itself , griffins, wyverns Phoenixes also had , his attention ; the blackness of negroes , toad sto th*t a kingfisher hanged the bill shows where the wind lies. Mostly Browne by dealt faithfully with the fallacies and superstitions he see s o ^pose. The book was a would make a popular success, and indeed today bed-book for the curious-minded. It is a discursive cheertu atld very work, a curious lore.imc. entertaining. It is learned work for its anaand runfull 01of curious is a learned wont ior its day he was far from Man's (leceivability astonished Browne, though ,maz*n? to burn steadily being Credulity But he lit a small candle the are the most fo6" SUperStition- zo?l?gical chapters picturesque. as death is had t?? C^scourse 011 whether a swan sings approaching, had argued Scaliger ^ar^an' both eminent physician-philosophers, about that th^^ En^ cou^ not agree- Moreover Aldrovandi reported after wandering Sw^nsh C 6en ^earc^ to on the Thames. But Browne s*ng the with, r last decides that ^on^nSs round the subject, at he almost assumes the s?ng of111^11^06 swan a vulgar error. But and was familiar Purple ^ evidently dissected swans w^h was often consulted thefainanatomy. There is no wonder that Browne ?n he had a store of OSOpk*ca^ and scientific matters of all sorts ; most c and occult ?US where the alchemical, astrological * ln^ormati?n> Were n llllgled with the true milk of the word. ?>s GLASGOW MEDICAL JOURNAL

Last Years. An interesting feature of Thomas Browne's life is that though it stretched from 1605 to 1682 and he lived through the civil war, and through the changes wrought by the Commonwealth and again by the Restoration, yet none of this commotion seems to have touched him. There are no echoes of all this disturbance in his writings. It is true, as Thomas Hardy indicated, that dynasties may pass while ordinary people are occupied with their daily tasks. Whatever may have been Browne's feelings he preserved a discreet silence, although he was a staunch Royalist at heart. In his later days he wrote a few tracts, entered up his commonplace books, and corresponded with his friends. He wrote advice to his son Edward, now a doctor and later to be F.R.C.P. and F.R.S. He mentions ' that the left rib of roasted beef powdered is a sovereign remedy against fluxes.' He chronicles the case of boulimia in a woman of Yarmouth aged 102, the oldest case he has seen ; but declines to waste ambergris (6 grain doses until the appetite moderates) on her. Then there was the great thunderstorm when a fireball struck his house, and the great thick mist ' so productive of catarrhs and coughs. He speculated on why a pig ' held up by the tail leaves squeaking,' and wondered whether as there be most female witches, so most females are bewitched, and why.' He notes the prevalence of agues, even of haemorrhagic types : he quotes his use of the Peruvian Bark and in one letter describes a case of ' pneumothorax, a julking and fluctuation in her chest.' Browne was elected an honorary Fellow of the College of Physicians in 1664, and was knighted by Charles II in 1671 when the King visited Norwich. He proposed to honour the mayor, but the mayor withdrew in favour of Norwich's greatest citizen. Sir Thomas Browne was never on the roll of the Royal Society, though both his son and grandson were. Perhaps the old man was rather suspect of astrological leanings and alchemical residues, and was not quite the standard sort of experimenter desired by the new learning, though Robert Boyle thought well of him. ' ' Sir Thomas Browne died after an attack of colick on his birthday in his 77th year, thus exemplifying by this what he had written in A Letter to a Friend that it would be a remarkable coincidence in persons, ' that the first day should make the last, that the Tail of the Snake should return into its mouth precisely at that time, and they should wind up upon the day of their Nativity.' His critic, Sir Kenelm Digby, also died on his birthday. Sir Thomas was buried in the chancel of St. Peter Mancroft in Norwich, but he was not to remain undisturbed in his ossuary, much as he had ' complained how unpleasant it was to be knaved out of our graves, to have our skulls made drinking-bowls, and our bones turned into pipes, to delight and sport our enemies.' In 1840 during repairs to the church SIR THOMAS BROWNE?CARTER 29 his coffin was accidentally opened and one of the workmen took his ? It is related that his hair, despite his age at death, and the time he a lain buried, was still profuse and of a fine auburn colour. The skull er was placed in the museum of the Norfolk and Norwich Infirmary, ^ Was carefully measured and the measurements recorded. For a time it y the , Royal College of Surgeons before its final re-burial at Norwich, ho ' knows the fate of his bones, or how often he is to be buried ? he once asked.

Retrospect.

than the accident of his Browne was nearer to Shakespeare's age was making great birth indicates ; and also of a time when philosophy and centuries strides. He was a link between the sixteenth eighteenth both. In his work and in his life and writings displays affinities with his mould with a genuine glowing phrases are out of the Elizabethan and as often Patina of the authentic bloom of the earlier period, poetic s as this life and man not are in substance moralisings on the vanity of thick with Latinisms poor mortality. Sometimes his style is sputtering a rich architecture of and self-coined words, artifice piled on artifice, runs clear and w?rds ; but now and then the stream of language quiet, ' we live is a flame, and Points out Gosse, as when he writes, Iyife pure for life, flames by the invisible sun within us. A small fire sufficeth great pyres seemed too little after death, while men vainly affected precious and to burn like His Sardanapalus.' Medici is his of Religio evasive apology for being a doctor and man science and yet a Christian man. As it was a for his ?wn private writing delectation, he plays with paradox to his heart's content, and tosses arguments in the air with a about which juggler's agility, theological points obviously troubled him very little. It is a polished and erudite Performance. He made his book hazy, dim in ; but as he Was also atmosphere making a beautiful book it is the atmosphere of a cathedral where the gloom is pierced by shafts of coloured flame as sun-beams Penetrate the many-coloured glass of high pointed windows. Faith and ^ he charity talked about, but words were his medium and his play- things, and no one ever used them more eloquently to speak of the goo ^e, and to convey such intimations of as forced themse ves ?n his immortality its o ^e questing mind, despite earthbound inclinations in the light of ? rising power the materialism of science. We carry within us all wonders we seek without us. There is all Africa and her pro lgies ^ us.'

It is said that for forty years he contemplated a continuation of the Religio but nothing came of it. Like Montaigne and Erasmus he con- tinually wondered at the miracle of human life. Who knows what ay 30 GLASGOW MEDICAL JOURNAL in the deep well of unconscious cerebration. He had brought a good deal ' to the surface, if not, as Henry James puts it, with quite the terrible ' fluidity of self-revelation of Montaigne, or for that matter of the more secular Pepys. He was, in any case a mirror of his age and exemplified in his person the harmonious conjunction of physician and man of letters. His writings indicate the restless enquiring spirit of the times, but he life on the never seems to have led a placid, easy, uneventful whole. He moved far from home where he was much occupied by his busy practice and his antiquarian hobbies. He was a very popular doctor, for he remembered people, and their ailments. His domestic letters give many pictures of his home life, and glimpses of his family and friends and the local doctors. He esteemed friendship as a virtue and, like Montaigne, cultivated it. Although he was probably widely known in certain circles he was of no as a repository of curious and remote knowledge, real and does not scientific standing among his contemporaries, appear to men of have been on intimate terms with the famous his day. He was full of the doctrine of Paracelsus, but a great admirer of Harvey, whose valued above discovery of the circulation of the blood he the discovery of America by Columbus. He knew five or six languages, besides Greek and Latin. His advice to the young men was sound. He advised them to and he study anatomy and practise dissection, recommended them to take Aatopsia as fidus Achates. Nevertheless he toyed with the idea of re-individualising the incinerated plant, and said it was possible, having chemists. His friend got the notion from continental Henry Power constantly urged him to make the experiment?to raise to freshnesss a sweet-smelling violet or primrose out of its ashes. Resurrection was a fascinating subject; palingenesis effected by some sort of biochemical synthesis under occult influences. It was only talked about. fascinating books, one of which Sir Thomas Browne wrote strangely As Huckleberry Finn said of someone quite different, is an English classic. ' stretched, but mainly he told the truth.' there was things that he was His language sumptuous. ' as Osier said, the waters He lived the good life and truly, mingled Browne survived her husband of science with the oil of faith.' Lady by nearly three years. to Bart's, sometime President of the Browne's son Edward, physician was a true product of the new age, and Royal College of Physicians, truth. He was an ardent traveller and worked by the clear light of when abroad with the Royal He constantly corresponded Society. later was well-known in with his father a little and London. practised ' son the little Tomey' of his He died in 1708 and his Thomas, doting his father's survived letters, who had followed in footsteps, grandmother's in 1710 after a fall from his horse. So Sir him by only two years, dying in the male line. Thomas Browne's family ceased SIR THOMAS BROWNE?CARTER 31

references. The best modern edition of the collected works is that edited by Geoffrey Keynes (1931), Faber and Faber ; Dr. Greenhill's edition is available in Macmillan's Golden Treasury series (it is incomplete, but contains the famous books) ; there is a handy one volume edition in Dent's Everyman's Library ; Wilkin's (1835) edition is very full and includes some letters. Cushing H. (1925). Life of Sir William Osier. Oxford : Clarendon Press Gosse, E. (1905). Sir Thomas Browne. London: Macmillan Lucas, B. v. (1905). Life of Charles Lamb. London: Metliuen Osier, W. (1908). An Alabama Student. Oxford Univ. Press Pater, W. (1881). Appreciatioi ts. London : Macmillan