Archbishop Secker as a Physician

Eighteenth-Century Europe is remarkable for the number of medically qualified men whose fame rests not on medicine, but on their achievements in other fields. The poets Oliver Goldsmith in England and Johann Schiller in Germany come to mind, as do the author Tobias Smollett and the French political activist Jean Marat. Another is the subject of this paper, Thomas Seeker, who in later life was successively bishop of Bristol, Oxford, and archbishop of Canterbury. Seeker’s undoubted pastoral sensitivity was reflected in his sermons and in the visitation charges which Richard Watson said deserved ‘as much attention as the best’ of those published in the eighteenth century. This, coupled with his own reticence, has tended to overshadow, if not totally eclipse, his earlier years of training as a physician, and his contribution to medicine. His biographer, Beilby Porteus, said of him ‘he chose always rather to talk of things than persons; was very sparing in giving his opinion of characters... Of his own good deeds or great attainments he never spoke, nor loved to hear others speak’

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• The Medical Professions in the Eighteenth Century

  Open Access•Bernice Hamilton•The Economic History Review•1951

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