An Address ON SIR THOMAS BROWNE: Delivered at the Physical Society, Guy's Hospital, October 12th
1905; BMJ; Volume: 2; Issue: 2338 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1136/bmj.2.2338.993
ISSN0959-8138
Autores Tópico(s)Nursing Education, Practice, and Leadership
ResumoAs a boy it was my good fortune to come under the influence of a parish priest of the Gilbert White type, who followed the seasons of Nature no less ardently than those of the Church, and whose excursions into science had brought him into con- tact with physic and physicians.Father Johnson, as his friends loved to call him, founder and Warden of the Trinity College School near Toronto, illustrated that angelical con- junction (to use Cotton Mather'a words) of medicine and divinity more common in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies than in the nineteenth.An earnest student of Sir Thomas Browne, particularly of the Religio Medici, he often read to us extracts in illustration of the beauty of the English language, or he would entertain us with some of the author's quaint conceits, such as the man without a navel (Adam), or that woman was the rib and crooked piece of man.The copy which I hold in my hand (J.T. Fields's edition of 1862) my companion ever since my schooldays, is the most precious book in my library.I mention these circumstances in extenuation of an enthusiasm which has enabled me to make this almost complete collection' of the editions of his works I show you this evening, knowing full well the compassionate feeling with which the bibliomaniae is regarded by his saner colleagues.I.-Tnn MAN.The Little Thomas was happy in his entrance upon the stage, October 1gth, i6o5.Among multiplied acknowledge- ments, he could lift up one hand to Heaven (as he says) that he was born of honest parents, "sthat modesty, humility, patience, and veracity lay in the same egg, and came Into the world " with him.0 his father, a London merchant, but little is known.There is at Devonshire House a family picture which shows him to have been a man of fine presence, looking not unworthy of the future philosopher, a child of 3 or 4 years, seated on his mother's knee.She married a second time, Sir Thomas Dutton, a man of wealth and position, who gave his stepson every advantage of education and travel.We lack accurate information of the early years-of the school days at Winchester, of his life at Broadgate Hall, now Pembroke College, Oxford, and of the influences which induced him to study medicine.Possibly he got his inspira-
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