Charleton, Walter (1620–1707)

CHARLETON, WALTER (1620–1707)

CHARLETON, WALTER (1620–1707), English physician and natural philosopher. Charleton was born in Shepton Mallet, Somerset, England, in 1619/20 and died in London in 1707. His tutor at Oxford, where Charleton earned a "doctor of physick" in 1643, was John Wilkins. His close relationship with the circle around William Harvey (1578–1657) influenced his thinking. He was appointed physician-in-ordinary to King Charles I, who was then at Oxford. He settled in London in 1650, remaining a loyal Royalist during the Interregnum, and was appointed physician to Charles II in 1660. During 1651 and 1652, he became acquainted with the new French natural philosophy of Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) and René Descartes (1596–1650). Charleton was one of the original members of the Royal Society. Because of professional jealousy, he was not admitted to the College of Physicians until 1676, although he served as its president from 1689 to 1691. He served as senior censor in the College of Physicians from 1698 to 1706 and delivered Harveian orations in 1702 and 1706. His medical practice eventually declined as his Royalist patients died off. Charleton died impoverished in London in 1707. His extensive writings included translations and paraphrases of some of J. B. van Helmont's (1579–1644) medical books and of Gassendi's Christianized Epicureanism, some original medical treatises, an explanation of Stonehenge, a biography of William Cavendish, duke of Newcastle, and an oration on the restoration of Charles II.

Charleton's first published work, the Spiritus Gorgonicus (1650), is an account of the formation of stones in the body, based on Paracelsian and Helmontian sources. The Ternary of Paradoxes (1650) includes a translation of van Helmont's Magnetic Cure of Wounds, a work describing the action of the weapon salve by which Paracelsian physicians claimed to be able to cure wounds across considerable distances, by treating the sword that inflicted the wound or other materials containing blood from the wound. The influence of Helmontian ideas remains evident in many of his later medical writings. During the 1650s, Charleton wrote several works, paraphrasing Gassendi's attempt to Christianize Epicureanism. Like Gassendi, Charleton tried to incorporate it into providential Christianity so that it could serve as a theologically acceptable replacement for Aristotelianism. Charleton's books were among the first and most important vehicles by which Epicurean thought came to Britain in the mid-seventeenth century.

The Darknes of Atheism, Dispelled by the Light of Nature (1652) is a self-proclaimed work on natural theology, closely following Gassendi's arguments. Charleton gave an account of the natural world in Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charltoniana: or A Fabrick of Science Natural, Upon the Hypothesis of Atoms, Founded by Epicurus, Repaired by Petrus Gassendus, Augmented by Walter Charleton (1654), a paraphrase of Gassendi's Syntagma Philosophiae Epicuri (1649). Like Gassendi, Charleton rejected the materialism of Epicurean atomism. The mechanization of the world was limited by the existence of noncorporeal entities: God, angels, and the human soul. Accordingly, Charleton published a dialogue entitled The Immortality of the Human Soul, Demonstrated by the Light of Nature (1657). Charleton presented a modified version of Epicurean ethics in his Introduction to Epicurus' Morals (1656). Although he accepted the basic tenets of a hedonistic ethics, Charleton objected to three of Epicurus' assertions: the mortality of the soul; the denial of providence and consequently the lack of obligation "to honour, revere, and worship God"; and the endorsement of suicide as "an Act of Heroick Fortitude in case of intollerable or otherwise inevitable Calamity." Charleton's Epicurean works were well known in the seventeenth century and were one source by which Robert Boyle, John Locke, and Isaac Newton became acquainted with Epicurean philosophy.

See also Boyle, Robert ; Catholic Spirituality and Mysticism ; Descartes, René ; Gassendi, Pierre ; Harvey, William ; Helmont, Jean Baptiste van ; Locke, John ; Medicine ; Newton, Isaac ; Wilkins, John .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kargon, Robert. "Walter Charleton, Robert Boyle, and the Acceptance of Epicurean Atomism in England." Isis 55 (1964): 184–192.

Osler, Margaret J. "Descartes and Charleton on Nature and God." Journal of the History of Ideas 40 (1979): 445–456.

Webster, Charles. "The College of Physicians: 'Solomon's House' in Commonwealth England." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 41 (1967): 393–412.

Margaret J. Osler