In this book, Gavin Francis writes about the resonance for him as a
medic in reading the work of early modern polymath Sir Thomas
Browne. Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) was an English physician,
wordsmith, and polymath who contributed hundreds of words to the
English language (such as medical, electricity, migrant, and
computer). After studying medicine in Montpellier, Padua, and
Leiden, he settled in Norwich, where he practised as a doctor and
wrote some of the greatest books of the seventeenth century, still
read for their accessibility and eloquence. In Sir Thomas Browne:
The Opium of Time, Dr Gavin Francis examines Browne's work through
a variety of themes: ambiguity, curiosity, vitality, piety,
humility, misogyny, mobility, and mortality. He argues that the
work has lost little of its power and wisdom, and none of its
beauty. Religio Medici ('Religion of the Doctor') examined the
vexed question of faith in a God who, to a physician, seemed
indifferent to suffering. Pseudodoxia Epidemica ('Vulgar Errors')
gave free rein to an agile curiosity and sought to debunk notions
then commonly believed, such as that dead kingfishers indicate the
direction of the wind, or that a woman could get pregnant from
sharing a bath with a man. Urne Buriall was Browne's meditation on
mortality, occasioned by a find of funerary urns, while Museum
Clausum ('Hidden Museum') sets out a series of thought experiments
and counterfactuals, such as how history might have been different
had Alexander the Great marched west instead of east. Gavin Francis
draws on his own experiences as a twenty-first century writer and
doctor to discover that although many centuries separate him from
Browne, they share a fundamental curiosity about the world and
about people.
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