Religio medici - Browne, Thomas Sir 1605-1682 (Leiden Hack, 1644)
First book of Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682), a doctor and polymath influenced by Francis Bacon's thought, but also struck by melancholy. It deals with the doctor's own Christian faith. As an autobiography, it is one of the very first of its kind. It was imitated numerous times, parodied (e.g., by John Dryden in his 'Religio Laici'), praised by Samuel Pepys and Virginia Woolf, and rediscovered by the Romantics in the nineteenth century (Coleridge in particular). It inspired Carl Gustav Jung to the term 'Religio Medici'.
Famous frontispiece engraving depicting a person falling from a mountain into the sea, saved by the hand of God appearing through a cloud.
Manuscript annotations throughout the book: underlined passages, notes
Originally published in 1642
Cardboard cover with red edges
Keywords: 17th Century (1601-1700); Biography; Medicine; Mysticism; Psychology; United Kingdom; theater; harmonie der sferen; muziek