Perspectives

Exhibition
Thomas Browne: a rarity among rarities
We are inclined to think of social It is as a curious seeker after truth and few remaining copies of the original,
networks as a modern phenomenon, a prolific philosophical writer with pirated edition. Browne argued that

Frontispiece of Religio Medici 1642 Houghton Library Harvard University

dependent on the technology of
electronic communication. What, then,
to make of a 17th-century Norwich
doctor, who rarely left his home, but
whose prolific writings were admired
across Europe? Whose impact was such
that writers of the modern era, from
Edgar Allan Poe to Jorge Luis Borges
(and not forgetting Virginia Woolf)
counted him as essential reading? Of
whose first book Sir William Osler, the
father of modern medical training and
practice, declared that no other had had
so enduring an influence on my life?
You can find some of the answers
at the Royal College of Physicians in
a colourful prose style that he has
captured so many admirers. A devout
believer, he wrote Religio MediciThe
Religion of the Doctoras a private
memoir delineating his personal
relationships with God, humanity, and
science. This was the book that Osler
loved so much that he had his well
thumbed copy placed on his coffin.
For Harriet Phillips, co-curator
of this exhibition, Browne was
the first public expert and a
pioneer of popular science: he
wanted to communicate to his
doctors should not practise purely for
gain, saying that, By compassion we
make others misery our own, and so,
by relieving them, we relieve ourselves
also. At a time when heretics had
been burned within living memory, he
wrote Persecution is a bad and indirect
way to plant Religion. In one of my
favourite passages, he writes: Men
that look no further than their outsides,
think health an appurtenance unto life,
and quarrel with their constitutions for
A Cabinet of Rarities:
being sick; but I that have examined the Curious Collections of
the parts of man, and know upon what
Sir Thomas Browne
tender filaments that fabric hangs, do Royal College of Physicians of
wonder that we are not always so; and London, London, UK, until

London, UK. An exhibition entitled readers a spirit of enquiry, considering the thousand doors that
July 27, 2017
https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/
A Cabinet of Rarities: the Curious rather than new facts. lead to death, do thank my God that we events/cabinet-rarities-curious-
collections-sir-thomas-browne
Collections of Sir Thomas Browne displays can die but once.
portraits, books, and objects that At first circulated as a manuscript, the Brownes boundless curiosity
recreate the world of a man living at book was unofficially published in 1642 and open-mindedness are his most
a moment of tension between the and proved such a roaring success that attractive qualities. At his home in
tyranny of authorities (whether Browne published an official, edited Norwich he built up a collection of
Aristotle, Galen, or the Bible), and version the following year. The Royal raritiesnot the tawdry manu
Enlightenment freedom to think College of Physicians displays one of the factured curiosities that were then
afresh. In Brownes lifetime political
revolution saw the world turned
upside down, but at the same
time the scientific revolution was
making equally radical changes to our
understanding of the natural world.
Browne was born in 1605 and lived
until 1682. As a young man he travelled
in Europe, gaining his medical degree in
the Dutch city of Leiden before settling
for life to his practice in Norwich. He
seems to have been a compassionate
and caring physician, treating both
rich and poor, but case notes on
display here show that his practice was
conventionally based on the humoral
theory of Hippocrates. He prescribed
broth of sheeps feet and calves feet
Royal College of Physicians

and milk pudding to the diabetic High

Sheriff of Norfolk, which at least cant
have done him any harm.
Had he limited himself to doctoring
no one would remember him today.

www.thelancet.com Vol 389 April 29, 2017 1687

 Perspectives
Cast of Thomas Brownes skull by Charles Williams c. 1900 with display photograph
by Mike Fear Royal College of Physicians
the rage, but specimens from the
natural world that could educate and
inform. He conducted dissections
and made experiments, recording
the results in his notebooks. For
Harriet Phillips, co-curator of this
exhibition, Browne was the first
public expert and a pioneer of popular
science: he wanted to communicate
to his readers a spirit of enquiry, rather
than new facts. While most of his
specimens have perished or otherwise
been dispersed, the exhibition has
reunited items known to have been his
objects of study: the skin of a lizard, a
set of weights for calculating doses of
medicine, the pressed specimen of the
first iris known to have reached Britain.
Exceptionally, for a doctor and
natural philosopher, Browne wrote
his books in English rather than Latin.
One of his most popular and influential
works was Pseudodoxia Epidemica,
or Enquiries into Very Many Received
Tenets and Commonly Presumed Truths.
Pointing out that these common
myths could often be simply disproved
by experiment, Browne was an early
scourge of fake news and alternative
facts. To the widely held idea that a
kingfisher (dead, presumably) hanged
by the bill, sheweth in what quarter
the wind is he robustly counters that,
If two be suspended in the same
room, they will not regularly conform
Georgina Ferry is the author of
their breasts, but oft-times respect
Neural Architects: The Sainsbury
Wellcome Centre from Idea to the opposite points of Heaven.
Reality (Unicorn Press, 2017) Other questions addressed with equal
1688 www.thelancet.com Vol 389 April 29, 2017
seriousness include whether elephants
have knees, and whether the fruit that
Eve gave to Adam was indeed an apple.
The book went into seven editions in
his lifetime, and was translated into
several European languages.
Browne owes his enduring influence
as much to his literary style as to his
inventive mind, and indeed the two
are related. He happily melded Latin,
Greek, and English to arrive at his
exact meaning, and is credited with
adding more words to the English
language than any other writer except
William Shakespeare700 by the
Oxford English Dictionarys count.
Most remain in common currency
today: ambidextrous, coma,
ferocious, exhaustion, precocious, distressed at the indignity of its public
therapeuticeven medical and display that he began a campaign to
literaryare just a few of the words
we could not do without. Virginia Woolf
may have underestimated his influence
when she wrote few people love the
writings of Sir Thomas Browne, but
those that do are the salt of the earth.
Brownes refreshing rationality
makes it all the more surprising that,
as a religious man, he subscribed
to conventional beliefs of the time
such as possession by spirits and
witchcraft. He was not alone, however,
in reconciling a scientific world view
with a religious one: Robert Boyle,
the Father of Chemistry, was a devout
Christian and believed in miracles. As
documented in the exhibition, Browne
acted as an expert witness at the trial
of two elderly widows, Rose Cullender
and Amy Denny, who were convicted
of bewitching children and hanged
at Bury St Edmunds in 1662. It is this
combination of devout religious faith
and enlightened enquiry that makes
him such an intriguing figure.
Brownes son Edward became
a successful London doctor, and
eventually President of the Royal
College of Physicians. He travelled
extensively, sending his father
rarities for his collection: their
prolific correspondence is an instance
of how ideas travelled through fairly
small intellectual communities in the
pre-internet age. Both, for example,
were enthusiastic supporters of
William Harveys new ideas about
the circulation of the blood. In 1680,
Edward Browne persuaded his patient
Henry Pierrepoint, Marquess of
Dorchester, to leave the College his
library of early printed books: several
of these are on display as examples of
the books Browne himself would have
owned. Brownes own books were
sold after Edwards death, but many
were bought by Sir Hans Sloane and
are now in the British Library.
Brownes coffin was accidentally
damaged in 1840 and his skull removed
and displayed in a local museum. Osler
made a pilgrimage to see it, but was so
have it reinterred. The reburial in the
Church of St Peter Mancroft in Norwich
eventually took place in 1921. By that
time five casts of the skull had been
madeone of these, belonging to the
Royal Society of Medicine, is in the
exhibitionas though the polymaths
cranium alone could shed light on
the workings of the brain that once
occupied it.
I study not for my own sake only,
but for theirs that study not for
themselves, wrote Browne. This
exhibition introduces a new generation
to the treasury of his mind.
Georgina Ferry
mgf@georginaferry.com