Religio Medici - Sir Thomas Browne
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Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) was a physician, author, and prolific stylist of the English language, coining such neologisms as "medical," "hallucination," "ambidextrous," "computer," and "suicide." He has been called "the great English literary eccentric, but also a true philosopher, driven by curiosity about absolutely everything." His work is noted for its weird and wonderful erudition, its deep, idiosyncratic introspection, and its skepticism of popular myths.
Religio Medici (The Religion of a Doctor, 1643) is his confessional and contemplative spiritual testament. In it, Browne explores the relation between his medical profession and his profession of faith, pondering the respective claims of science and religion. Although he argues for personal charity, intellectual humility, and irenic devotion, in the zealous 17th-century climate in which he wrote, his book attracted a Papal ban.
Like most physicians of his era, Browne's medical practice was rooted in humoralism, the ancient idea that disease was caused by an imbalance of four vital fluids, or "humors." But he was also critically engaged with Paracelsus, the "Luther of Medicine" who radically challenged these ideas.
The book was a European best-seller, influencing later writers like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Virginia Woolf, and Carl Jung. Richard Dean Smith describes Browne's "ornately crafted accomplishments in... quirkily intellectual prose" wrestling "mightily in his attempts to reconcile scientific with humanistic thinking. Contemporaneous reviewers were quick to point out resemblances to Browne's productions in Melville's books... especially those in Mardi and Moby-Dick."
Religio Medici:
- Kindle
- Google books
- Gutenberg
- Librivox 5h 25m
Extracts:
- "By the way Melville reads Old Books. He has borrowed Sir Thomas Browne of me and says finely of the speculations of the Religio Medici that Browne is a kind of 'crack’d Archangel.' Was ever anything of this sort said before by a sailor?" (letter by Evert Duyckinck, 18 March 1848)
This meetup is part of the series Circuses and Snake Oil.