Sir Thomas Browne: The Opium of Time (My Reading)

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 Epidemic