Thomas Browne

English physician, scholar, and writer

• Born: October 19, 1605
• Birthplace: London, England
• Died: October 19, 1682
• Place of death: Norwich, Norfolk, England

Browne became a public figure in 1642 with the unauthorized printing of Religio Medici. He became famous for a skeptical prose style and a freethinking perspective, evident in his eight published works, as well as a singular, eclectic, unorthodox, and interdisciplinary approach to the mind, body, and spirit.

Early Life

Sir Thomas Browne was born in London on October 19, 1605, the only son of Thomas Browne, a silk mercer from Chester. After the death of his father in 1613, Browne’s mother married Sir Thomas Dutton, a soldier. In 1616, Browne began his education at Winchester College. At eighteen, he continued his studies at Broadgates Hall, Pembroke College, Oxford, where he matriculated in 1623 and graduated with a B.A. in 1626. He received an M.A. in 1629. Although he first gained distinction at Pembroke as a classical scholar, Browne’s future inclinations toward medicine, philosophy, metaphysics, and religion were influenced greatly by two men: Thomas Clayton, principal at Pembroke and professor of physics, and Browne’s tutor, Thomas Lushington, a liberal-minded cleric who later moved to Norwich.

It is not known when exactly Browne first began the study of medicine. Following his graduation, Browne visited Ireland with his stepfather on a tour of English military installations. Between 1630 and 1633, he traveled in France, Italy, and Holland, and studied at the medical schools in Montpellier, Padua, and finally Leyden, where he received his M.D. in 1633. There is general disagreement as to what happened next for Browne. According to some scholars, he returned to London in 1634, then resided at Shipden Hall, near Halifax. Others maintain that, after leaving Leyden, Browne worked as a doctor’s assistant in Oxfordshire until he was incorporated M.D. at the university.

Browne settled in Norwich in 1636 or 1637, where he practiced medicine (as a family doctor) for the rest of his life, never again leaving East Anglia. Between 1635 and the end of his first year in Norwich, Browne spent his leisure time composing Religio Medici (1642, authorized ed. 1643; the religion of a doctor). The book was written for his own private satisfaction and exercise, as Browne tells his readers in the preface, “To the Reader,” that accompanies the 1643 revised edition of his text.

Life’s Work

In 1641, Browne married Dorothy Mileham, the daughter of Edward Mileham of Burlingham St. Peter, a village not far from Norwich. By all accounts, the Brownes were happily married. They had twelve children; eight died in infancy or youth, while four survived into adulthood. Edward, their eldest son, became a distinguished medical practitioner in London. Before the unexpected success of Religio Medici in 1642, Browne had already become the leading botanist and naturalist of Norfolk and Suffolk. As a physician he was highly regarded. Browne was also popular for his characteristic modesty: He was known to blush visibly when receiving a compliment.

By 1671, Browne’s celebrity had grown to the extent that King Charles II bestowed a knighthood upon him. As the story goes, Charles II (accompanied by the Royal Court) visited Norwich. The king called upon Browne at his home and was impressed to find father and son (Edward) busily dissecting a dolphin. Later, at the royal banquet, the king—obliged by his visit to honor a local citizen—first approached the mayor of Norwich, who declined, but suggested Browne instead. Browne, a passionate Royalist, accepted.

Andrew Crooke printed a copy of Religio Medici in 1642 without Browne’s knowledge. Once he discovered the text, Browne was initially furious, because the edition was riddled with errors. He soon forgave Crooke, however, then partially revised the work for a second edition, published in 1643. No manuscript copy of Religio Medici in Browne’s own hand survives, but the book was issued in many versions during the seventeenth century and was translated into Dutch, French, and German. A 1644 Latin translation, published in Leyden, was widely read on the Continent.

The Roman Catholic Church condemned the text and, in March, 1645, placed Religio Medici on the Index of Prohibited Books due to the author’s freethinking spirit. Although Parisians considered Browne a Roman Catholic, Church authorities in Rome found him to be an atheist because of his book’s skeptical inquiry into relationships between reason and faith, body and soul, medicine and religion. Browne’s arcane, capacious, and erudite style in Religio Medici established his reputation as a literary master.

Browne’s most ambitious work, Pseudodoxia Epidemica: Or, Enqueries into Very Many Received Tenets, and Commonly Presumed Truths (1646; commonly known as Browne’s Vulgar Errors ), investigates diverse superstitious beliefs held during the seventeenth century, such as the notion that a man’s skeleton contains one less rib than a woman’s. In 1658, Browne published Hydriotaphia Urne-Buriall: Or, A Discourse of the Sepulchrall Urnes Lately Found in Norfolk together with The Garden of Cyrus: Or, The Quincunciall Lozenge, or Net-Work Plantations of the Ancients . Each text was dedicated to a friend living in the Norwich area: the first to Thomas le Gross, the second to Nicholas Bacon. Hydriotaphia Urne-Buriall offers, by way of four sepulchral urns recently discovered in Norfolk, a meditation on burial customs and the human desire for immortality. The Garden of Cyrus pursues the Platonic ideal through studies in architecture, botany and horticulture, geometry and mathematics, music, and verbal imagery.

Browne’s four remaining primary works were printed posthumously. Miscellany Tracts (1684) addresses various topics in archaeology, botany, theology, music, and philology that were originally prompted for Browne’s inquiring mind by friends and distinguished correspondents, such as Nicholas Bacon and John Evelyn . A Letter to a Friend, upon Occasion of the Death of His Intimate Friend (1690)—probably composed early in 1657—elaborates upon a clinical report on an actual patient of Browne who died of phthisis (pulmonary tuberculosis). Repertorium (1712) reflects upon the monuments and tombs in Norwich Cathedral. A collection of short essays, Christian Morals (1716), illustrates the proximity of Browne’s unorthodox religious philosophy to deism and atheism.

In addition to these eight major works, Browne authored three minor texts—Nature’s Cabinet Unlock’d (1657); a poem, “Animae brutorum sunt corporeae” (1680); and “A Discourse on the Fishes Eaten by Our Saviour” (1684)—and coauthored at least two others: Mercurius Centralis (1664) and “A Discourse of Subterraneal Treasure” (1668). He also produced a collection of notes on a range of subjects, a short essay “On Dreams,” several poems, and numerous letters.

Browne died in 1682 of natural causes on his seventy-seventh birthday and was buried at St. Peters, Mancroft, Norwich. His coffin was inadvertently disturbed in 1840 by a workman’s pickax; Browne’s skull was subsequently taken into the care of Norwich Hospital, where the relic is preserved to this day.

Significance

Browne’s literary achievement has overshadowed his accomplishments in medicine, natural history, occult philosophy, and other fields of knowledge, including religion, philology, archaeology, botany, and anthropology. His catholic intellectual interests, the breadth and depth of his knowledge, and the idiosyncrasies of his methods make Browne the epitome of the Renaissance Humanist. These eclectic characteristics garnered both praise and protest for Browne, however, as his autonomous, skeptical stance on religious and political matters, in particular, engendered strong criticism.

In an age of vituperative rhetoric, Browne’s quietist voice was unique, compelling, and suspicious. Browne’s pursuit of the natural and the metaphysical, the worldly and the transcendental, was ultimately driven by his fascination with a combination of Neoplatonic, hermetic, pagan, and scientific traditions. He believed in Christianity as well as in the occult writings of Hermes Trismegistus and also defended various tenets from Zoroastrianism, alchemy, astrology, and witchcraft.

Browne’s singular qualities are matched by his manner of writing. His prose, which combines the Ciceronian and Senecan styles popular during the seventeenth century, demonstrates deft spontaneity and elegant digression. Browne’s works have been admired by many great writers, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Herman Melville, Virginia Woolf, Jorge Luis Borges, Max Sebald, and Stephen Jay Gould.

Bibliography

Bennett, Joan. Sir Thomas Browne: A Man of Achievement in Literature. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1962. Bennett interprets the literary significance of Browne’s major, minor, and posthumous works in terms of his life and cultural milieu.

Dunn, William P. Sir Thomas Browne: A Study in Religious Philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1950. Dunn’s biographical and formal analysis consists of four thematic sections (Renaissance worldviews, faith and reason, the art of God, and literary themes), each addressing a range of Browne’s texts.

Havenstein, Daniela. Democratizing Sir Thomas Browne. Oxford. England: Clarendon Press, 1999. Havenstein’s monograph investigates the reception and influence (both literary and cultural) of Browne’s Religio Medici through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Merton, Egon Stephen. Science and Imagination in Sir Thomas Browne. New York: Columbia University Press, 1949. Merton’s biographical and formal study follows three primary topics (science, philosophy, and art) across the spectrum of Browne’s works.

Patrides, C. A., ed. Approaches to Sir Thomas Browne. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1982. This edited collection of fifteen original essays by leading scholars in the field presents an array of perspectives on the life and work of Sir Thomas Browne, such as Browne’s prose style and the essay tradition, and Religio Medici, and the English civil wars.

Wise, James N. Sir Thomas Browne’s “Religio Medici” and Two Seventeenth-Century Critics. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1973. Through the critical writings of Browne’s contemporaries, Sir Kenelm Digby and Alexander Ross, Wise examines the literary and cultural history of Religio Medici in the seventeenth century.

Wong, Samuel Glen. “Constructing a Critical Subject in Religio Medici.” Studies in English Literature 43, no. 1 (2003): 117-121. Wong’s article studies the authorship and textual production of Religio Medici by way of Kenelm Digby’s observations upon the work and Browne’s replies to Digby in private correspondence.