Thomas Browne (1605-1682) [HISTORICAL] was an English physician and author. He became an M.D. in 1633 and began a practice at Shibden Hall near Halifax, in Yorkshire, before going to Oxford. Browne had a habit of writing notes and journal entries, eventually compiling his most famous work, Religio Medici. It is described as a “journal largely about the mysteries of God, nature, and man, which he himself described as ‘a private exercise directed to myself’” (p 2). Browne was able to produce many written works by using notebooks of his own thoughts, later publishing books like Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646), The Garden, and A Letter to a Friend, Upon occasion of the Death of his Intimate Friend(1609). He explores many topics, from horticulture to dispelling superstitions to death. He especially took care to show scientific explanations for things rather than relying on superstition, and would blend English, Latin, and Greek together in order to write his exact thoughts. Because of this, he is “credited with adding more words to the English language than any other writer except William Shakespeare—700 by the Oxford English Dictionary’s count” (Ferry 1688). 

It is especially interesting that Orlando chooses to attribute immortal writing with Thomas Browne, especially at the time of the book that it occurs. Orlando is comparing the conquests of his ancestors: “But of all that killing and campaigning, that drinking and love-making, that spending and hunting and riding and eating, what remained? A skull; a finger. Whereas, he said, turning to the page of Sir Thomas Browne… and Orlando, comparing that achievement with those of his ancestors, cried out that they and their deeds were dust and ashes, but this man and his words were immortal” (Woolf 81). The placement of this comparison coincides with a theme in one of Browne’s passages in Pseudodoxia Epidemica, which pertained to “solemn reflections on death and the transience of human fame” (p 3).

Ferry, Georgina. “Thomas Browne: a Rarity among Rarities.” The Lancet, vol. 389, no. 10080, 29 Apr. 2017, pp. 1687–1688., doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(17)31067-x.

“Sir Thomas Browne.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Browne.

Woolf, Virginia. Orlando: a Biography. Harcourt, Inc, 1973.