Sir Thomas Browne's chemistry

Abstract

Sir Thomas Browne was born in 1605 and died in 1682, and he saw in his lifetime the first stage of the Scientific Revolution in Europe. It is always difficult to assign a date to the beginning of any revolution, because it may begin long before the first full-scale battle and continue in many ways after the victory or defeat of the revolutionary forces. In the case of Science, the situation was more complex because the various branches of it did not all experience their revolutions during the same period. For example, although William Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood at the beginning of the century marked a great advance towards the new understanding of Anatomy, there is no doubt that in many ways he was a medieval scholar, and his Physiology and Chemistry were largely those of the Middle Ages.