Francis Bernard (physician)

Francis Bernard (bapt. 1628 – 1698) was an English apothecary, astrologer and physician, known for a large medical library.[1]

Francis Bernard

Life

He was the son of Samuel Bernard, vicar of Croydon, and his wife Elizabeth. Until later middle age he was an apothecary, made free of the Society of Apothecaries in 1653.[1] Charles Bernard was his brother.[2]

Bernard was incorporated M.D. at Cambridge in 1678, having received a Lambeth degree earlier in the same year from William Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury.[3][4]

He became a fellow of the College of Physicians of London in 1687, nominated by James II's charter: he had been elected an honorary fellow seven years earlier. He was elected assistant-physician to St Bartholomew's Hospital 20 November 1678, and was appointed physician in ordinary to James II. Robert Walpole (1650–1700) was one of his patients.[3] He was on good terms with Theophilus de Garencières.[5]

Bernard died 9 February 1698, and a monument to him was placed in St Botolph Aldersgate, by his wife.[3]

Library

His house was in Little Britain, London, near St Bartholomew's Hospital, and it contained a major library. Besides the learned languages, Bernard knew French, Spanish, and Italian. The medical part of his library was reputed to be the largest collection of books on physic yet made in England.[3] It was auctioned after his death, and much of it went to Hans Sloane.[1][6] The sale was also the source for John Toland of works by Giordano Bruno.[7] Among the Sloane manuscripts is one of Bernard's casebooks.[3]

Astrologer

Bernard was also an astrologer, who cast horoscopes in the traditional way. The nativity he gave for George Joyce survives.[8] John Aubrey took an interest in the horoscope for Thomas Hobbes on which Bernard collaborated with John Gadbury.[9] Bernard was lampooned as "Horoscope" in Samuel Garth's The Dispensary:[10]

An inner Room receives the numerous shoals
 Of such as pay to be reputed Fools,
 Globes stand by Globes, Volumes on Volumes lie,
 And Planetary schemes amuse the eye.

Bernard communicated to William Lilly in 1664 a theory on horoscopes for cities, and its application to the prediction of fires in London.[11]

Family

Bernard and his wife Anne were married around 1654.[1]

Notes
  1. Burnby, Juanita. "Bernard, Francis". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/2241. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. Lyle, Ian. "Bernard, Francis". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/2238. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  3. Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1885). "Bernard, Francis (1627-1698)" . Dictionary of National Biography. 4. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  4. "Bernard, Francis (BNRT678F)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  5. Bevan, Michael. "Garencières, Theophilus". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/10381. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  6. "The Sloane Collection of Manuscripts". The British Museum Quarterly. 18 (1): 8. 1953. ISSN 0007-151X.
  7. Laerke, Mogens (2009). The Use of Censorship in the Enlightenment. BRILL. p. 142 note. ISBN 978-90-474-2902-9.
  8. Thomas, Keith (1973). Religion and the Decline of Magic. Penguin Books. pp. 422 and 443 note 80.
  9. Aubrey, John (2019). ́Brief Lives ́, chiefly of Contemporaries, between the Years 1669 & 1696: Volume I. 1. BoD – Books on Demand. p. 455. ISBN 978-3-7340-8033-3.
  10. BISHOP, W. J. (1948). "Some Medical Bibliophiles and Their Libraries". Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. 3 (2): 252. ISSN 0022-5045.
  11. Thomas, Keith (1973). Religion and the Decline of Magic. Penguin Books. p. 388.
  • A Catalogue of the Library of the Late Learned Dr. Francis Bernard (1698)[1]
Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1885). "Bernard, Francis (1627-1698)". Dictionary of National Biography. 4. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

  1. A Catalogue of the Library of the Late Learned Dr. Francis Bernard, Fellow of the College of Physicians, and Physician to S. Bartholomew's Hospital ... Which Will be Sold by Auction at the Doctor's Late Dwelling House in Little Britain: the Sale to Begin on Tuesday, Octob. 4. 1698 (in Latin). 1698.
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