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Dr. Thomas Sherley,
Physician in Ordinary to King Charles II
[Biography taken from the Journal of Medical History at www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov]
Autographed pamphlet in the hand of Dr.
Thomas Sherley
Med Hist. 1962 July; 6(3): 266.2-274.
'THE INGENIOUS AUTHOR'
A STUDY OF DR. THOMAS SHERLEY (I638-78)
PHYSICIAN-IN-ORDINARY TO CHARLES II
by
PHOEBE PECK
In the third decade of the seventeenth century was born one
Thomas Sherley
(sometimes 'Shirley'), whose great-grandfather, Sir Thomas Shirley,
was
appointed in 1587 treasurer-at-war to the English army serving
in the Low
Countries; he involved himself inextricably in debt to the Crown;
and he was
the first to suggest to James I the creation of the rank of baronet.'
Shirley's
eldest son, Sir Thomas Shirley, the Traveller or the Adventurer,
to keep up
with the achievements of his two better known brothers, Anthony
and Robert,
and to secure a means oflivelihood, undertook several voyages
or, more bluntly,
privateering expeditions to foreign ports. His only surviving
son by his first
marriage, Sir Thomas Shirley, carried the name of the Sufferer,
because he had
suffered much during the Rebellion for adhering to the cause
of Charles I.
His eldest son, the Thomas ofthis study, was bornin the Parish
ofSt. Margaret
within the City of Westminster and was baptized on i5 October
I638. He lived
with his father in Magdalen College while Oxford was garrisoned
by the King's
troops and attended school there. He studied medicine in France,
where he
obtained his M.D. degree.2'3
In I667, an article by a 'Tho. Shirley, Esq.', appeared in
the Philosophical
Transactions,4 describing the burning fountain in Wigan, Lancashire.
This
account of an escape of firedamp from a coal deposit has been
credited to
Dr. Sherley.5 It is very doubtful if that attribution is correct.6
Robert Hooke recorded in his diary for 1674 a Dr. Sherley,
earlier a 'Dr.
Sherlys'.7 John Aubrey wrote that Thomas Shirley, M.D., edited
a report of a
murder trial, published in London in I676. However, this was
in the form of a
letter written by Sir Thomas Overbury to Dr. Thomas Sherley.8'9
Obviously Sherley was not seen too well-yet he 'became noted
for his
Practice' in London.'0 His works, written later were dedicated
to his illustrious
patients, and in them he mentioned other persons treated of high
rank and
learning in the Kingdom. In I662, at the age of twenty-four,
Sherley was made
physician-in-ordinary supernumerary to King Charles II."
Like Willis, Sherley held that diseases, especially of the
blood, were due to
fermentation. He described 'continuel fevers' as arising from
fermentation in
the veins and arteries-'either the venal or arterial Blood (which
is to be look'd
upon as one and the same liquor by reason of its circulation,
happily found out
267
Phoebe Peck
by Dr. Harvey)'. In a verbal war with the apothecaries, who
were prescribing
medicines on their own, Sherley time and again urged all honest,
able physicians
to prepare and dispense their own medicines.
For my part [he stated], I think it so much my duty, that
I declare I will be ready upon the
application of any Sick Persons to me, to afford them not onely
my advice, but will also
furnish them with safe and efficacious Medicines ...
As Sherley practised, he also wrote. His main purpose in writing
was to
accomplish what he called the most difficult thing in the art
of medicine-the
application of general precepts to particular subjects and persons.
In I672 the
name of Thomas Sherley was definitely known. Then the young doctor,
now
thirty-four, published his only original work, A Philosophical
Essay: Declaring
the probable Causes, whence Stones are produced in the Greater
World . . .12 (Illus.),
dedicating it to George, Duke of Buckingham, Member of the Privy
Council,
an experimental philosopher.
'The Ingenious Author of this Essay',13 thought that he should
write first an
inquiry into the origin of stones in the earth before publishing
a medicinal
tract on stones in the human body (a tract that was never forthcoming).
The
book was a defence of what the writer labelled a philosophical
truth-that the
matter of stones and all other bodies was water and their efficient
seed. The
view that inorganic material had its own force or breath was
widely accepted in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and Sherley was one
of the chief
exponents of the theory of the petrific seed.14 In other words,
stones were made
out ofwater by the power of their invisible seeds. It might be
said that Sherley's
ideas were based on an atomic theory-'By Water, the Material
Principle of
all Concrets, I understand, a fluid Body, consisting of very
minute parts, and
variously figur'd Atoms, or Corpuscules.' Some thirty-seven years
later, a
reviewer dismissed Sherley's little book with these words-'Contains
nothing
worth notice.'15
Sherley relied upon many authorities, such as 'my excellent
Friend Mr.
Boyl'; 'that Worthy Man, Helmont'; 'the Learned Kircherus'; 'that
incomparable
Man, Dr. Harvy'; Willis, 'a very learned man, and Eminent Physician'.
He
gave quotations in the original Greek or Latin with the translation
to substantiate
his arguments. 'For,' he remarked, 'I verily believe, that if
an Angel himself
should avouch any thing singly, and as his own Opinion, he would
not be
believed by some Men.'
The books Sherley used belonged to him. His library, sold
the year after his
death, was the first purely medical collection to be auctioned
in England.16
Actually two collections were sold at the same time"7-the
books on theology
and philology and the sermons probably had been owned by the
Rev. Stephen
Watkins, while the books on medicine, chemistry, natural history,
and some of
the Greek and Latin dictionaries were probably Sherley's. It
is anybody's
guess as to whether the priest or the physician owned the several
plays, the
books on Parliament and the monarchs, on Florida, New England,
and Virginia,
and on the hunting of foxes. About 470 items out of the total
number of some
268
'The Ingenious Author': A Study of Dr. Thomas Sherley (i638-78)
3,300 were on medical subjects, and they included the works ofWilliam
Harvey,
Mayow, Boyle, Cardanus, Sydenham, Willis, Fracastoro, Digby,
Gideon
Harvey, Greatrakes, Glisson, Pare, van Helmont, Mauriceau, and
Rueff.
Prices noted in the margins show that Harvey's De generatione,
Amsterdam,
i65I, went for sd.; his De motu cordis, Rotterdam, i66o, for
Is. 4d.; Glisson's
Tractatus de ventriculo . . . London, i677, for 2s. 6d.;18 and
the Philosophical
Transactions 'about 46, or 48, one or two a little Imperfect',
for 5s. Sherley's
translations were worth from 7d. to Is. 9d.-slightly more than
the Harveys.
In a catalogue with such brief entries, questions are bound to
arise. One
concerns the date of Sherley's work, A Philosophical Essay, which
is given as
I 67 I. Even though this date has been used,19 the problem here
is that the Preface
in this book, 'To the Reader', is dated 27 January I672 (cf date
on title-page
of Illus.). Another question is regarding the item, Two Speeches,
one of the Earl of
Shaftesbury [upon the Debate of appointing a day for the hearing
of Dr. Tho.
Sherley's Case], and the other of the Duke of Buckingham, &c.,
with the entry,
Amster. I675. However, so it has been reported, 'these Speeches
are said to be
printed at Amsterdam, but were not'.20
On 21 March I674, the record shows that Sherley received a
salary to CIoo
in his capacity of physician-in-ordinary supernumerary to Charles
II.21 Exactly
one year later, on 2I March I 675, he was given the grant as
physician-inordinary.
22 The favours and benefits to which lavish acknowledgments are
made in the prefaces of his translations, done a year or so later,
played some
part in this appointment.
What Sherley did as one of the numerous royal physicians-in-ordinary
is not
known. The Merry Monarch apparently never obtained for him the
distinction
of being elected to the Royal College of Physicians. Sherley
was not, it seems,
associated with the College.28
During the next two years, Sherley published four translations,
the first of
which was Sir Theodore de Mayerne's small work, A Treatise of
the Gout.
Written Originally in the French Tongue ... I676.24 Mayerne had
left his library,
containing many of his manuscripts to the Royal College of Physicians;
and
some of these (two translations) were published by Sherley and
others by Sir
Theodore de Vaux, Mayerne's godson.25
Sherley's translation of the treatise was dedicated to the
Rt. Hon. William,
Earl of Strafford,26 Member of the Privy Council. Since Sherley
had treated the
Earl for gout with good success, he hoped that his patient, who
had conferred
upon him favours for many years, would be interested in having
this description
of the disease. Like Mayerne, he believed that tone, strength,
and vigour could
be restored to the body 'by actually and really removing the
Diseasie-Product,
and carrying on the Offending matter by rationally-compos'd,
safe and easie
Medicines'.
In the same year appeared Sherley's translation of Moellenbrock's
Cochlearia
Curiosa: Or, the Curiosities ofScurvygrass.27 This was dedicated
to SirJohn Bennett
because of his long friendship and frequent favours. 28 'The
Ingenious Interpreter
of this Book',29 first published in Leipzig in I674, thought
its contents were of
269
Phoebe Peck
such value that it should be made available to his countrymen.
A later reviewer
of this translation wrote only, 'Scurvy-grass is not now in that
high estimation
in which it formerly stood.'30
Sherley advised his readers to make use of the more simple
medicines until
the next impression of the book. Here he was to give his opinion
upon the
medicines in it, together with a description of some chemical
ones and of the
composition of some Galenic ones. When the book did appear again
in I677, it
had a different title-page on which the publisher made no mention
ofits being a
translation and neglected to mention either Moellenbrock or Sherley.
The fact
is that this publication is merely the I676 translation with
a new title-page.
The publisher, William Cademan, who had also been responsible
for Sherley's
book on stones, presumably tried to pass off, as a new book,
surplus sheets of the
original printing of the translation.3'
Sherley's third translation was another of Mayerne's works-Medicinal
Councels, or Advices ... I677.32 He dedicated this book to Denzell,
Lord Hollis,
his most generous patient-generous because, upon his recovery,
his Lordship
had given him a most obliging character of his skill and care
as a physician. It
was to Lord Hollis that his book on stones in the human body
was to have been
dedicated.
Since only a few copies had reached England from Germany,
Sherley thought
it useful to do as his fourth translation Elsholtz's The Curious
Distillatory . . .
I677,33 originally published in Berlin in I674. He dedicated
it to the Rt. Hon.
Philip, Earl of Chesterfield, because of his interest in chemistry,
also 'highly
esteemed and promoted by the Example of our own Sovereign's delighting
in
it, and favouring of it'.
In several places, Sherley made references to what was to
be his treatise on
the causes and cures of the stone in the human body. He had even
written some
parts of it, but he complained that he had 'no conveniency to
compleat the
same, by reason of the removal ofmy Habitation, and the constant
Trouble the
prosecution of my Right to a comfortable Estate, hath engaged
me in'. The
favours so gratefully acknowledged by Sherley in his dedications
probably
played a role here as well as in his royal appointment.
The story is this. About the same time that Sherley received
his grant as
physician-in-ordinary, he appealed to the House of Lords against
a decision in
Chancery by which Sir John Fagge (sometimes 'Fagg'), a Member
of the House
of Commons, kept possession of an estate in Wiston, Sussex. The
estate, granted
Fagge during the Rebellion, had descended to Sherley from his
great-grandfather;
and Sherley petitioned the Lords that the deed of settlement
be restored
to him.34 This appeal to the Lords against a Member of the other
House,
Sherley v. Fagge, is the most celebrated of three such instances
that took place
about the year I675.35
The Commons voted the appeal a breach oftheir privileges;
on I7 May i675,
the Lords insisted on their right to receive and determine in
time of Parliament
appeals from inferior courts even when a member of the Lower
House was
concerned. Although the Commons denied this right, the supreme
appellate
270
'The Ingenious Author': A Study of Dr. Thomas Sherley (i638-78)
jurisdiction of the Lords was tacitly recognized.36 When Lord
Shaftesbury made
a motion to appoint a definite day for hearing Sherley's cause,37
he declared
that the business of the Lords was to redress grievances-'your
Judicature is the
Life and Soul of the Dignity of the Peerage in England; you will
quickly grow
burdensome if you grow useless'-,-
When Sherley did appear at the Bar of the House of Lords in
November, his
counsel admitted that he was not acquainted with the case. Sherley
was asked
if he wished to continue. He replied, undoubtedly quite wearily,
that, 'He
desired to go on presently, if he could have Counsel to plead
his Cause.'39
The same counsel was assigned. To preserve good understanding
and give
dispatch to important bills, both Houses agreed to put off proceedings
of the
case. 40, 41, 42 However, a revival of the dispute provided once
more a pretext
for postponement, and Parliament was prorogued for the unprecedented
period
of fifteen months.
Yet, the solution of the European conflict was to be sought
at Westminster;
and the greatest monarch in Christendom waited for a revival
of Sherley v.
Fagge.43 The next session ofthe Cavalier Parliament, which opened
in February
I677, was adjourned after two brief sessions. And, amid a host
of alliances,
briberies, and intrigues, Sherley's cause was neglected."
He could now well
have been given the title by which his father was known-the Sufferer.
On 5 August I678, at the age ofthirty-nine, Sherley died ofgrief,
which 'arose
upon a just Suspicion that he should be totally defeated' of
his estate.45 He had
married twice and had five children, about whom nothing definite
is known.46
No trace of his burial-place, in a vault in St. Bride's Church,
London, can be
found at the present time.47
Dr. Sherley was not a master-mind ofhis day, and he is not
well known today.
He produced one treatise and four translations; and his name
is part of a sales
catalogue and a law suit. Let it stand that his works represent
the thoughts
and hopes of a young physician practising and writing during
a reign which
witnessed not only great strides in medical observation and scientific
experimentation
but also the common practice of touching for the King's Evil.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank for their generous assistance those persons
whose names appear in
connexion with personal communications in 'Notes and References'
and also Dr. Ralph H. Major, Professor Emeritus, and Dr. L. R.
C. Agnew, Chairman, Department of the History of Medicine, University
of Kansas Medical Center.
271
Phoebe Peck
NOTES AND REFERENCES
I. Dictionary of National Biography. (I917). London, Oxford University
Press,
vol. xvmI, 138.
2. Ibid., go.
3. WOOD, ANTHONY A. (I 72 I). Athenae Oxonienses. An Exact History
ofall the Writers
and Bishops who have had their Education in . . . Oxford . .
. The second edition ...
London, printedfor R. Knaplock, D. Midwinter andJ. Tonson, vol.
I, col. 552.
4. SHIRLEY, THO. (I809). A well and earth in Lancashire taking
fire at a candle.
Phil. Trans.... Abridged ... by Charles Hutton, George Shaw,
Richard
Pearson. London, C. and R. Baldwin, vol. I, I69 pp.
5. WATT, ROBERT (1824) .BibliothecaBritannica . . . Edinburgh,
printedforArchibald
Constable & Co.; Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown &
Green; and Hurst,
Robinson & Co., London, vol. II, col. 852i. (Gives date of
Sherley's birth as
I633.)
6. WADE, PHILIP (7 October 1959). Librarian, The Royal Society
of Medicine.
Pers. comm.
7. HOOKE, ROBERT (I935). Diary of Robert Hooke... Edited by Henry
W.
Robinson and Walter Adams ... London, Taylor & Francis, pp.
62, 153.
8. AUBREY, JOHN (I898). 'Brief Lives', chiefly of contemporaries,
set down by john
Aubrey, between the years I669 and I696. Edited from the author's
MSS. by
Andrew Clark. Oxford, Clarendon Press, vol. II, 228 pp..
9. Dictionary of National Biography, London, O.U.P., vol. xav,
I276.
10. WOOD, op. cit.
I I. Lord Chamberlain's Records. (3 November I662). 3/26, Folio
141.
12. SHERLEY, THOMAS (1672). A Philosophical Essay: Declaring
the probable Causes,
whence Stones are produced in the Greater World: . . . Being
a prodromus to a medicinal
tract ... London, printed for William Cademan. Tr. in Latin,
Hamburg, I675,
I699. (Copy, I672, in Clendening Medical Library, University
of Kansas
Medical Center, is author's autographed presentation copy to
William Wentworth,
2nd Earl of Strafford, with bookplate of William Charles De Meuron,
7th Earl Fitzwilliam, probably by inheritance of Baron Wentworth
estates by
2nd Earl Fitzwilliam.)
13. Phil. Trans. (1672). London, printed by T. R. for John Martyn,
vol. VII, 4030.
14. ADAMS, FRANK DAWSON (1938). The birth and development of
the geological
sciences. Baltimore, The Williams & Wilkins Company, 86 pp.
I5. Phil. Trans. (I809). Abridged by Charles Hutton, George Shaw,
Richard
Pearson. London, printed by and for C. & R. Baldwin, vol.
I, 703.
i6. FULTON, JOHN F. (I95I). The great medical bibliographers
. . . Philadelphia,
University of Pennsylvania Press. (Penn. Univ. Rosenbach Fellowship
in
Biblio. Fund; Yale Univ. Sch. of Med., Yale Med. Lib., Hist.
Lib. Publ.
No. 26), p. 31.
17. SHERLEY, THOMAS (I679). Catalogus librorum ... Bibliothecarum..
. Stephani
Watkins . . . Thomae Sherley ... Per Gulielmum Cooperum . . .
Little Britain.
I8. The price noted in the Bibliotheca Meadiana, 1755 (seventy-six
years later), is 4s.;
at the Sotheby auction, I960, is C85.
I9. Dictionaire des sciences midicales. Biographie medicale.
(1825). Paris, C. L. F.
Panckoucke, Editeur, vol. vII, 213.
20. WOOD, op. cit., vol. II, col. 725.
272
'The Ingenious Author': A Study of Dr. Thomas Sherley (i638-78)
2 I. Lord Chamberlain's Records. (2 I March I 674). 3 /24.
22. Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, i673-6 under 21 March
I675, 32: 'Grant to
Dr. Thomas Sherley of the place of physician to the King in ordinary.
Minute.
Home Office, Warrant Book I, 54.'
23. PAYNE, L. M. (I5 October 1959). Librarian, Royal College
of Physicians.
Pers. comm.
24. MAYERNE, THEODORE TURQQUET DE (I676). A treatise of the Gout.
Written
Originally in the French Tongue... Englished ... by Thomas Sherley
... Whereunto
is added, advise about hypochondriacal-fits, by the same author.
London,
printed for D. Newman.
25. MUNK, WILLIAM (1878). The Roll of the Royal College ofPhysicians
ofLondon. . .
(Manuscript addition to Hutchinson's Biographia medica from Wood
and Dodd
on Thomas Sherley in handwriting of Munk in Royal College of
Physicians.)
London, published by the College, vol. I, p. I68.
26. T hs 2nd. Earl of Strafford, William Wentworth (I626-95),
was the one to
whom Sherley had presented an autographed copy of his work on
stones
(see illustration).
27. MOELLENBROCK, ANDREAS VALENTINE (i676). Cochlearia Curiosa:
Or, the
Curiosities of Scurvygrass, . . . Written in Latine by Dr. Andreas
Valentinus
Molimbrochius ... Englished by Tho. Sherley .. . London, printed
by S. and
B. Griffin, for William Cademan . . . (Copy in Historical Library,
Yale
University, has biographical material from Wood on Thomas Sherley
written
by descendant of Sir Thomas Shirley [grandfather of Dr. S.],
Evelyn Philip
Shirley (I812-82), with signature, 'Ev: Ph: Shirley'.).
28. State Papers. (24 February i674-5). 29/368, Folio 120.
29. Phil. Trans. (I676). vol. xi, 62I.
30. Phil. Trans. (I809).... Abridged, vol. II, 300.
31. WADE, op. cit.
32. MAYERNE, THEODORE TURQUET DE (I677). Medicinal Councels,
or Advices:
written originally in French ... Put out in Latine at Geneva,
by Theoph.
Bonetus ... Englished by Tho. Sherley . . . London, printed for
N. Ponder.
33. ELSHOLTZ, JOHANN SIGISMUND (I677). The Curious Distillatory:
... containing
many experiments easy to perform,yet curious ... Together with
several experiments upon
the blood ... Written originally in Latin by Jo. Sigis. Elsholt.
Put into English
by T. S.... London, printed for J. D. for Robert Boulter.
34. The Case of Thomas Sherley Esquire. One of His Majesties
Physitians-in-ordinary,
Plantiff, against SirJohn Fagg, Baronet, Defendant. vol, lxI,
23. (Bodleian Lib.
Wood 276b. (6I).)
35. HALLAM, HENRY (1857). The Constitutional history of England
... London,
John Murray, vol. III, PP. 25-7.
36. OGG, DAVID (1955). England in the reign of Charles IL 2nd
ed. Oxford.
Clarendon Press, vol. II, P. 532.
37. Historical Manuscripts Commission, i676-7, gth Report, pt.
2, 78.
38. The History and proceedings of the House of Lords from the
Restoration in I66o, to the
present time ... London, printed for Ebenezer Timberland, 1742,
vol. I, p. I68.
39. journal of the House of Lords. 19-22 November I675. vol.
xv, p. 32.
40. Papers relating to Parliamentary affairs (concerning appeal
of Shirley v. Fagg),
House of Commons, 13-19 November I675, ff. 22r-26v. (Brit. Mus.
MSS.
add. 22263.)
273
Phoebe Peck
4I. journal of the House of Commons, 17-19 November I675. Vol.
IX, 379-80.
(Cf., no. 40.)
42. Journal of the House of Lords. 19-22 November I675. Vol.
xv, 29-32.
43. OGG, op. cit., PP. 540-I.
44. DODD, CHARLES (I742). The church history of England from
the year I500 to the
year i688. Brussels, vol. III. 280. pp.
45. WOOD, op. cit., vol. I.
46. Notes and Qyeries. Edited by Dr. Doran. .. I I April I894,
5th s., No. I5, P. 294
(by E. P. Shirley); 13 June I874, No. 24, 477 (by S.).
47. ARMITAGE, THE REV. CYRIL M. (i November 1960). St. Bride's
Church,
London. Pers. comm.
274
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Dr.
Thomas Sherley