Browne, Thomas

(b. London, England, 19 October 1605; d. Norwich, England, 19 October 1682)

general science, natural history.

Browne’s father, Thomas, had come in early manhood from Chester to London, where he was a mercer, or silk merchant. There he married Anne Garroway of Acton, Middlesex. They lived in comfortable circumstances with their son and four daughters. The senior Browne died when his son was eight years old, but left ample means for his education. Accordingly, the boy was sent to Winchester College in 1615. William of Wykeham’s famous school was Anglican and Royalist, and provided a sound classical education that was a good foundation for the erudition acquired by Browne in later years. He remained at Winchester for eight years, until, in 1623, he proceeded to Oxford. He matriculated at Broadgates Hall, which soon afterward was upgraded to become Pembroke College. Browne, although only a freshman, was called upon to deliver a Latin oration at the inauguration ceremony.

Winchester would have afforded the boy little or no opportunity for study of the natural sciences, so it was probably during the school holidays that he began to acquire his knowledge of natural history. At Oxford a chair of anatomy had just been established in addition to several other chairs of physical sciences. Browne’s teachers included Dr. Clayton, an anatomist and Regius professor of medicine, and Dr. Thomas Lushington, a mathematician and clergyman. Clayton’s influence directed Browne’s attention to the study of medicine and human anatomy, but this could not begin seriously until he had taken his M.A. in philosophy in 1629. He then left Oxford and spent some weeks in Ireland with his stepfather, Sir Thomas Dutton, before proceeding to Montpellier for full training in medicine.

It is not known how long Browne remained in France, but his travels in several European countries cannot have occupied less than four years. He probably spent some time in Padua, but his final goal was Leiden, where he defended his thesis and received his M.D. in December 1633. During these travels he studied many subjects besides medicine, absorbing information of all kinds and acquiring knowledge of several modern languages.

English regulations required a medical man with a foreign degree to practice for four years with an established doctor before being allowed to have his M.D. by incorporation at Oxford or Cambridge. It is probable that Browne spent these years of apprenticeship somewhere in Oxfordshire, but no details are known. He took his M.D. at Oxford on 10 July 1637 and was then, at the age of thirty-two, free to practice anywhere that he chose. It was during these four years that Browne wrote his most famous book, Religio medici, which was not published until 1642. Influenced, it is believed, by his Oxford friend Dr. Lushington, Browne moved in 1637 to the East Anglia city of Norwich and established himself there as a physician. In 1641 he married Dorothy Mileham, from a neighboring village. They had twelve children, only four of whom survived their parents. Edward, the eldest son, became a well-known physician in London and was president of the College of Physicians in 1704. Browne was knighted in 1671 by King Charles II, who was visiting Norwich and wished to honor its most distinguished citizen.

Browne’s Religio medici describes the religion and philosophy of a tolerant, humorous, and latitudinarian mind. He did not, however, expose in it much of his attitude toward the rapidly expanding world of science. Yet throughout his apprenticeship and first years in Norwich he must have been reading widely in travel, philosophy, medicine, and science, and compiling the notebooks from which he quarried his next, very long book, Pseudodoxia epidemica: or, Enquiries Into Very Many Received Tenents, And Commonly Presumed Truths (1646). In this he sought to dispel popular ignorance about many matters in history, folklore, philology, science, medicine, natural history, and embryology. He was, thus, to be designated an “enquirer after truth” rather than a “scientist” (a term not yet invented), his field of inquiry being as wide as all human knowledge. He accepted the authority of William Harvey, one of the first great experimental scientists, and told a young correspondent: “Be sure you make yourself master of Dr. Harvey’s piece, De circulatione sanguinis, which discovery I prefer to that of Columbus.” Browne conducted many experiments in physics, electricity (a word of his own coining), biology, and comparative anatomy, dissecting animals, birds, fishes, reptiles, worms, and insects. He became an acknowledged authority on the plants, animals, birds, and fishes of East Anglia. Many of his experiments are mentioned in his Pseudodoxia epidemica and his letters. Others, such as investigations of bubbles, and of coagulation, freezing, and other properties of matter remained in the privacy of his notebooks.

Throughout his active life Browne lived on the fringe of the scientific world. His profession was medicine; his hobbies were science and natural history. He was an earnest amateur and never, as far as is known, left Norfolk for London. He was elected a fellow of the College of Physicians, but was never a fellow of the Royal Society of London, nor did he betray any desire for this kind of recognition. His elaborate and highly latinized prose style was very different from the much more austere style deliberately adopted by the fellows of the Royal Society. He was content to correspond with various fellows, such as Henry Oldenburg (secretary of the Society), John Ray, Christopher Merrett, and the diarist John Evelyn, and occasionally to send communications through his son Edward.

He was deeply interested in archaeology; one of his most famous books was Hydriotaphia, or, Urneburiall (1658), occasioned by the discovery of some supposed Roman (really Saxon) burial urns near Norwich. He corresponded with other eminent antiquaries, such as Sir William Dugdale, Elias Ashmole, and John Aubrey. With these manifold interests and occupations, it is not surprising that Browne is remembered as a learned man and a literary artist rather than for any important contributions to contemporary science. His qualities served to foster a general interest in science and, above all, to illuminate thought by truth concerning the material world.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Browne’s works are Religio medici (pirated ed., London, 1642; 1st authorized ed., London, 1643), which also appeared in Religio medici and Other (Shorter) Works, L. C. Martin, ed. (Oxford, 1964); Pseudodoxia epidemica (London, 1646); Hydriotaphia, or, Urne-buriall (London, 1658); The Garden of Cyrus (London, 1658); Miscellany Tracts (London, 1684); A Letter to a Friend (London, 1690); Posthumous Works (London, 1712), with a biography by John Whitefoot; and Christian Morals (London, 1716), later edited, with a biography, by Samuel Johnson (London, 1756).

The following are collections of Browne’s works: The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, Thomas Tenison, ed. (London, 1686); Sir Thomas Browne’s Works, Simon Wilkin, ed., 4 vols. (London, 1836), which contains much biographical and scholarly material; The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, Sir Geoffrey Keynes, ed., 6 vols. (London, 1928–1932; rev. and enl. ed., 4 vols., London, 1964), which is the standard and only complete edition and includes miscellaneous material from manuscripts and letters.

II. Secondary Literature. Works on Browne are Joan Bennett, Sir Thomas Browne (Cambridge, 1962); Jeremiah Finch, Sir Thomas Browne (New York, 1950); Sir Edmund Gosse, Sir Thomas Browne (London, 1905); F. L. Huntley, Sir Thomas Browne (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1962); Sir Geoffrey Keynes, A Bibliography of Sir Thomas Browne (Cambridge, 1924; 2nd rev. ed., Oxford, 1968); and Oliver Leroy, Le chevalier Thomas Browne (Paris, 1931).

Geoffrey Keynes

Thomas Browne d. 1825, Loyalist commander in the American Revolution. A resident of Augusta, Ga., he was the victim of colonist violence in 1775, when he was tarred and feathered for ridiculing the Continental Congress. Later he organized (1778) a Loyalist troop in Florida and raided settlements in S Georgia. In 1780 he captured Augusta; in 1781 he was forced to surrender to Andrew Pickens and Henry Lee. After his exchange he was a colonel in the Queen's Rangers in South Carolina and was defeated (May, 1782) by Anthony Wayne. Browne, who was fiercely hated by the colonists, escaped and lived out his life in the British West Indies.

Brown, Thomas (1750–1825) Revolutionary War soldier and superintendent of the Southern Indian Department, born in Whitby, England. A conspicuous Loyalist, Brown was an early target of the Georgia Whigs. He promoted the strategy of recruiting Indian allies to fight revolutionaries, and recruited corps of rangers in east Florida. Brown led raids along southern Georgia frontier. He constructed Fort Cornwallis on the Savannah River (surrendered June 6, 1781) and defended Savannah (surrendered July 11, 1781).