Background

Thomas Linacre was born c. 1460, probably at Canterbury, England, United Kingdom. He was descended from an ancient family recorded in the Domesday Book.

Education

Linacre received his early education at the school of Christ Church Monastery, Canterbury, under the direction of William de Selling, later prior. It appears at the age of twenty Linacre went to Oxford, where he learned some Greek and in 1484 was elected fellow of All Souls College.

He studied Greek with Demetrius Chalcondylas in Florence, met Hermolaus Barbarus in Rome, became acquainted with the printer Aldus Manutius in Venice, and graduated Doctor of Medicine from Padua in 1496. He then engaged in further study with the humanist-physician Nicolò Leoniceno in Vicenza and returned to England by way of Geneva, Paris, and Calais.

Back at Oxford, Linacre was incorporated Doctor of Medicine in consequence of his Paduan degree.

Career

About 1501 Linacre became tutor to Prince Arthur (who died in the following year) and in 1509 was chosen as one of the physicians to Henry VIII at a salary of £50 a year. From this time onward he lived chiefly in London, where his patients and friends included Cardinal Wolsey, Archbishop Warham, Bishop Fox, and such eminent scholars as Colet, More, Erasmus, and William Lily.

At about the same time Linacre, in search of greater leisure, took holy orders. His highly placed friends found him a succession of ecclesiastical livings, which he either sold or deputized; he was thus enabled to devote most of his efforts to scholarship (although he remained physician to the king, in which post his duties were nominal).

Linacre was especially concerned in translating Galen’s writings into Latin, beginning with the treatise of hygiene, De sanitate tuenda.

Since there was then no printer in England sufficiently able or willing to assume the financial risk of producing this work for the English market, the tract, dedicated to Henry VIII, was published in Paris in 1517. Linacre’s second translation, Galen’s Methodus medendi, was also published in Paris (1519). It, too, was dedicated to the English king.

Linacre’s next translation of Galen, De temperamentis, was, however, published in England, from the press of John Siberch in Cambridge (1521). In addition to the works that he brought to publication, he is known to have translated yet others, but with the one exception, a brief extract from Paul of Aegina, these were either lost or destroyed after his death. His very considerable Continental reputation, especially in Greek medical scholarship, was clearly recognized by Erasmus.

Linacre’s translations were not republished in England, although there were approximately forty Continental reprintings of them between 1524 and 1550. Linacre himself may have come to realize that more than the Greek medical classics were necessary to improve the state of English medicine. Just prior to his death he arranged that funds from his considerable estate should be used to establish the Linacre lectures at Oxford and Cambridge. Although he did not specifically declare that the lectures must be devoted to medical subjects, there nonetheless seems little doubt that such was his intention. He did not live to see the misuse of this endowment.

The right to practice medicine had previously been conferred only upon medical graduates of Oxford or Cambridge or to Such men as were licensed by bishops (or in London by the bishop or by the dean of St. Paul’s). This result, desirable from the physicians’ standpoint, was recognized and envied by those practicing outside the area of the College’s supervision, where licensing remained beyond the control of the medical profession.

Linacre’s sense of the dignity of medicine was paramount. As the College served to promote that dignity, so it also maintained it. For this reason, the College of Physicians of London became the focus of physicians in London and, to some degree, elsewhere. It thus represents his most enduring work.

Achievements

• Linacre was responsible for an important contribution to English medicine in his work toward founding the College of Physicians of London. Through his influence, the College was granted, from its foundation in 1518, the power to license physicians in London and for seven miles surrounding.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Galeni Pergamensis De Temperamentis

    (Latin Edition)

    1521
  • De naturalibus facultatibus 1523

Connections

Nothing is known of Linacre's family.

patient :

Henry VIII of England Tudor

References

• Thomas Linacre, 1460-1524: An English Physician Scholar of the Renaissance.
• The life of Thomas Linacre, doctor in medicine, physician to King Henry VIII: The tutor and friend of Sir Thomas More, and the founder of the College...
• Essays on the Life and Work of Thomas Linacre c. 1460-1524
• Thomas Linacre: Linacre Lecture, 1908
• Dictionary of Scientific Biography Volume 7
  1973