Sir Thomas Browne and His Books

SIR THOMAS BROWNE AND HIS BOOKS. H. S. CARTER, M.D., D.P.H. êr 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 pÛl?ê^ 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, ^^"cûrchman 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 âSol 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 êapsid ?f Thomas Browne, merchant ^ranc^son Michael's Cheap on Cheshire *n of St. ôncôn parish the time 19th Oct ^?rn Plot, 1605, about 6r' êar Gunpowder with Lear. Shak his dramatic edifice King WaS crown*n? later. and Milton three years ^?eUibrancltSêareWES ôrn *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 ^ êory vâ^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, ^ôntpellier,-1655) who introduced the teaching of chemistry there and was a a^vocaê ?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 reÛrnec^ 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 aêr However, like Ulysses he had seen men and cities tî mus^ have had a good deal stored in his memory if not on his ^ ^roês^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.

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