A Letter to a Friend

Short description: Letter by Thomas Browne

A Letter to a Friend

Title page of 1690 first edition

Author| Sir Thomas Browne
Country| Kingdom of England
Subject| Medicine

Publication date

| 1690

Dewey Decimal

| 826
LC Class| PR3327

A Letter to a Friend (written 1656; published posthumously in 1690), by Sir Thomas Browne, the 17th century English philosopher and physician, is a medical treatise of case-histories and witty speculations upon the human condition.

## Contents

* 1 Publication
* 2 Morgellons
* 3 References
* 4 External links

## Publication

The Letter was first published as a folio pamphlet in 1690, after having been left out of the 1686 posthumous collection of Browne's complete works. Few copies of this pamphlet are extant; several of those which have survived did so because they were bound as an addition to his complete works.[1] It was then included in his 1712 Poshumous Works printed by Edmund Curll, and a 1716 collection titled Christian Morals edited by John Jeffrey.[1][2]

## Morgellons

Browne's pamphlet is the source of a term Mary Leitao coined in 2001 to describe her son's skin condition. She chose the name "Morgellons disease" based on a skin condition described by Browne in Letter to a Friend,[3] thus:

> Hairs which have most amused me have not been in the Face or Head, but on the Back, and not in Men but Children, as I long ago observed in that endemial Distemper33 of little Children in Languedock, called the Morgellons, wherein they critically break out with harsh Hairs on their Backs, which takes off the Unquiet Symptomes of the Disease, and delivers them from Coughs and Convulsions34.[4]

There is, however, no suggestion that the symptoms described by Browne are linked to the alleged modern cases of Morgellons.[5] In 1935, Charles Ernest Kellett MD FRCP (1903–1978), who lectured in the history of medicine at the University of Newcastle medical school,[6] wrote a detailed criticism of Browne's Morgellons reference.[7]

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Letter to a Friend: A Note on the Text". https://penelope.uchicago.edu/letter/ltext.html.
2. ↑ "Christian Morals". https://penelope.uchicago.edu/cmorals/.
3. ↑ "The Major Works of Sir Thomas Browne", edited and with an Introduction by C. A. Partides. Penguin 1977
4. ↑ "Sir Thomas Browne's A Letter to a Friend". http://penelope.uchicago.edu/letter/letter.html.
5. ↑ Ferreira, Bárbara Roque; Roccia, Maria Grazia; Cardoso, José Carlos; França, Katlein; Wollina, Uwe; Lotti, Torello; Fioranelli, Massimo (October 2017). "History of Morgellons disease: the same name for different psychodermatologic diseases?". Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift 167 (S1): 49–51. doi:10.1007/s10354-017-0552-8. PMID 28299553.
6. ↑ "OBITUARY". British Medical Journal 2 (6146): 1234–1235. 28 October 1978. doi:10.1136/bmj.2.6146.1234.
7. ↑ "The Morgellons". http://penelope.uchicago.edu/letter/kellett.html.

## External links

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*[LC Class]: Library of Congress Classification