The works of the English author Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) are in large part inquiries into religion, morality, science, and human error. A doctor and scholar, he is chiefly famed for Religio medici, which is marked by his masterly prose style.

Thomas Browne was born in Cheapside, London, on Oct. 19, 1605. He was the son of a mercer of genteel Cheshire ancestry who died 8 years later, leaving "a plentifull Fortune." After earning a master's degree at Oxford in 1629, Browne studied medicine in Montpellier, Padua, and Leiden, where he received a degree in medicine in 1633. About 1635, while a young doctor in Yorkshire, he composed Religio medici (A Doctor's Religion) "as a personal exercise." In 1637 he settled in Norwich and gained esteem as a doctor who kept abreast of current revolutionary developments in medicine, such as William Harvey's discovery of blood circulation. In 1641 Browne married Dorothy Mileham, who bore him 12 children...