Browne Sir Thomas

Browne, Sir Thomas, writer and physician, was born in 1605 in London. Educated at Oxford, he studied medicine, graduating M.D. at Leyden in 1633, and setting up in practice at Norwich in 1637. It is, however, not so much as a doctor as the author of the Religio Medici or A Physician's Religion that Browne is best known. It is supposed to have been written in 1635, and the manuscript being passed about among his private friends, it was surreptitiously published in 1642. This compelled the author to publish an authorised edition, which was done in 1643. The book at once attracted the attention of the learned throughout Europe, being translated into various languages, and honoured with insertion in the Index Expurgatorius. Browne's next book, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Inquiries into very many received Tenets and commonly presumed Truths, which examined prove but Vulgar and Common Errors, appeared in 1646, and heightened the author's literary reputation as well as displayed his learning. In 1658 his Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial; or a Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns lately found in Norfolk, and The Garden of Cyprus, or the Quincuncial Lozenge, net-work Plantations of the Ancients, artificially, naturally, mystically considered, appeared - the former being a treatise on the burial customs in different countries and different times, the latter being a fantastic attempt to show that the number five pervaded the horticulture of the ancients, and recurred throughout plant-life. These works ranked him amongst the first antiquaries, and in 1665 he was appointed an honorary member of the College of Physicians. When Charles II. visited Norwich in 1671 he conferred a knighthood on Browne. Other writings of his were published after his death, which occurred in 1682. He was buried in St. Peter's, Mancroft, Norwich, and his coffin was accidentally split open by some workmen in 1840. The bones were found to be in good preservation, even the auburn hair being still fresh. His skull is now preserved under a glass case in the museum of Norwich hospital.