As A Physician
Blackmore has come down, largely through the verse of Alexander Pope, as one avatar of Dulness, but, as a physician, he was quite forward thinking. He agreed with Sir Thomas Sydenham that observation and the physician's experience should take precedence over any Aristotelian ideals or hypothetical laws. He rejected Galen's humour theory as well. He wrote on plague in 1720, smallpox in 1722, and consumption in 1727.
He died in Boxted, Essex and was buried in his local parish church, where a monument was constructed.
Read more about this topic: Richard Blackmore
Famous quotes containing the word physician:
“But what is quackery? It is commonly an attempt to cure the diseases of a man by addressing his body alone. There is need of a physician who shall minister to both soul and body at once, that is, to man. Now he falls between two stools.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)